“Architectural sketches” (Author, 2022)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Opening Up the Space of Drawing Again
3. The Representational Paradigm: Three Basic Assumptions About Drawing by Hand
4. Entering the Space of Drawing: The Performative Paradigm
4.1 From neutral surface to inhabited topos
4.2. From traces to situated figurations
4.3. From lines-as-marks to lines-as-processes
5. Conclusion: The Locus of Creation Explored
The essay that follows will be published in six installments; this, the third installment, contains section 4.1.
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An earlier version of this essay was previously published as (Paans, 2024a), except for the Introduction, which was written specifically for APP.
4. Entering the Space of Drawing: The Performative Paradigm
4.1 From neutral surface to inhabited topos
Consider the conception of a drawing surface as a neutral plane. What does it mean to draw a line, or to trace a figure on such a plane? At first sight, it implies a form of notation on a medium for later retrieval. Although this answer is correct, it is also trivial. It tells us nothing about either the nature of the drawn line or the drawing surface, let alone about the relation that emerges between them. It is as applicable to any form of writing as to drawing. If we wish to know the nature of the drawn line, we have to move beyond functional explanations, and consider the effectiveness of drawing as a cultural practice.
A first hint of this effectiveness lies in the etymology of the verb “draw.” To draw is to pull a sharp object across a surface, scratching the trajectory that it followed. The pulling activity is important, as it implies the exertion of force, something that we do not usually associate with drawing by hand nowadays. However, history shows that the relation between the drawing instrument and the surface was multi-dimensional. With modern drawing, the drawing instrument (pencil, marker) largely lost its material connection to the receptive surface. However, from classical antiquity up until the Renaissance, engravings and drawings were largely inseparable.
A poignant example is the epure, or engraved stone installed at the building site of medieval cathedrals. The outline of the building plan was engraved on a large slab of stone for consultation by the workers and the architect. It provided a physical guideline for those working on the building, even if it did not contain all the fine details. Given the fact that such buildings took often to more than a single generation to complete, and the fact that inscribing a large stone with a building plan must have taken a significant amount of work, the drawing became a material point of reference for a joint project—a stable site to which to return and to guide further progress. It materiality was of the utmost importance: it had to last for a long time, and many people would spent literally their entire life working alongside it.
The same relation between materiality and durability can be witnessed in renaissance drawings. To draw effectively, a parchment had to be prepared, inscribed, and filled with specially prepared ink. If anything, in this type of procedure the line lost much of its spontaneity. However, as we can witness in the drawings of for instance Leonardo da Vinci, sketching remained possible alongside writing.[i] But still, even when the material link between line and surface is weakened, putting down the line creates a new situation. Especially during a creative process, the relation between line and depiction grows more complex than one would suspect:
I put down something on paper and then react to it. Once I make a line, it becomes a condition: does it look like what I thought? Does it make me want to draw another or shall I erase it? It encourages me to make decisions only I can make. It has instantly become something that already exists and it draws me into the world of its own need to be drawn. (Fitch, 2011: p. 147; see also Dernie, 2013)
In the quotation above, Doug Fitch describes the line as a condition: it transforms the surface on which it is drawn. It directly demarcates it as left-and-right, up-and-down, in-and-out, and it may even suggest depth. Through the presence of the line, the surface acquires an orientation. Simultaneously, the line invites further exploration. Even before we consider the line’s instrumental value as a vehicle of visual representation, we must consider it as an effective cause. The line transforms the surface—it is not merely a passive trace on a passive canvas. Once the line is drawn on the surface, it engages in an interplay with it. The German term Bildakt (image-act) emphasizes this dynamic character: a line is a visual act rather than a static representation (Bredekamp, 2015). The anthropologist Tim Ingold investigated line patterns that the South Indian Kōlam use to ward off demonic presences. These patterns, writes Ingold, are “not made on a surface, but they define it as a geometrical plane” (Ingold, 2007: p. 57). However, in a refined form of artwork called kampi, even this clear distinction between line and newly defined surface becomes indistinct. The lines seem to dissolve the surface (Ingold, 2007: p. 57).[ii] This simple example illustrates already something of the complex, dynamic relation between line and surface, or alternatively, figure and ground.
Figure 1: This sketch is expressive rather than descriptive, because its lining and shading suggests a depth and volume that adds an additional dimension to the surface. (Author, 2018)
Similarly, John Berger states that the paper “becomes what we can see through the lines drawn on it; yet it remains itself” (Berger, 2000: p. 124). All this points to an effectiveness exerted by the drawn line. Drawing a line is not an inconsequential act, but rather causes various visuospatial effects that are not just representational. Many of them have little to do with representation in the strict sense but are intended to create sufficient conditions for an idea to appear (see Fig. 1 above). In view of this, it makes sense to think of the line as an event rather than a symbol, mark, or trace.
Fitch mentioned the line as the creation of a condition. As image-acts, lines actively create conditions that do not just happen to the surface, but that transform the surface into a space. We can quite literally wander in-between the lines in this imaginative space, and “take it in possession” (Polanyi, 2010: p. 18; Zumthor, 2014; Pallasmaa, 2009: pp. 109–110). With good reason, Michael Polanyi spoke of “indwelling” in an idea, regarding them as spatial rather than visual or conceptual entities. This inhabiting process allows for imaginative immersion. This is important since architecture is inherently spatial. The fact that drawing takes place on a flat surface or a digital screen does not remove the need for inhabitation. Paul Emmons took this thought a step further by coining the term “inhabitative imagination” (Emmons, 2019: p. 41; see also Emmons 2007). Echoing theories from the Renaissance onwards, the idea is that drawing by hand facilitates the process of mentally inhabiting the building or space that is being designed. As Le Corbusier put it: one must learn to “stroll” with a pencil (Emmons, 2019: pp. 41, 113). The drawn lines become instruments of inhabitation and perspective-taking. In a process of embodied acquainting oneself, the architectural space is traced out by situating oneself in it.
As Gaston Bachelard once remarked, all thinking is to some degree spatial (Bachelard, 1994: p. 212). We order our thoughts as up-and-down, inside-and-outside, above-and-below, in front-and-behind, and so-on. Even when constructing simple hierarchies or chapter structures, we are already involved in the spatiality of thought. Likewise, when we categorize, we erect an inside-outside barrier in which all objects A are situated inside, while all non-A’s are situated outside. Even at the most basic level, thought cannot be without space. For this reason alone, we can see how putting down a line and creating a condition shapes thought processes, as a kind of mental ordering is implied form the very start.
Thinking is inherently relational and architectonic, in the sense that it turns towards systemic relations that have a certain spatial orientation. For this reason, Pallasmaa describes the “architectural image” as an organizing image (Pallasmaa, 2011: pp. 121–122). By “image” he does not mean just a visual representation of a building or a space, but instead the most basic categorical order that we use to think at all. This categorical order encompasses the distinctions between inside and outside, up and down, horizontality and verticality, static and dynamic, defined and undefined. These relationships are mapped out and carefully staged while one draws. The line as a condition marks the beginning of a thinking-through-creation, utilizing the most basic spatial categories of thinking to inhabit and make sense of an idea.[iii]
The French writer Michel de Certeau has drawn attention to the anthropological and symbolic languages that are used in this process (De Certeau, 1988: pp. 118-120; Paans and Pasel, 2020; see also Cook, 2014: p. 30). In the case of anthropological language, the drawing is approached as a space, and one can orient oneself in it. Descriptions like “follow the hallway and turn right at the end to enter the living room” imply a form of perspective-taking that occurs while drawing by hand – one has to “stroll along” with the description in order ot make sense of it. In doing so, one must imaginatively take a perspective. Likewise, in Donald Schön’s seminal sociological study The Reflective Practitioner, this “conversation with the situation” occurs continuously during design processes (Schön, 1987). The fact that this situation is conducted through the embodied mind makes it a lived experience rather than dry theorizing. Recent findings have shown how important the relation to the first-person perspective is for architectural design. Drawing an idea from various perspectives involves perspective-taking, aided by embodied movements (Mittelberg, Schmitz, and Groninger, 2017). The process of inhabiting various perspectives brings an idea, or even a world, to life (see Fig. 2 below).
Figure 2: Different perspectives and human figures allow one imaginatively to “inhabit” a drawing or idea. (Author 2018)
By contrast, symbolic language stabilizes lived meanings. It uses a broadly standardized system to order the plurality of perspectives and notions. For instance, the architectural map is an abstract totality in which the viewpoint is changed from playful, perspectival exploration to systematic abstraction. The map represents a point of view and a level of abstraction that we do not encounter in everyday life.
But while drawing lines by hand, one visually constructs literally a space that is explored and that becomes an active participant in the creative process. The surface is instrumental in achieving this:
The architect’s drawing surface is not merely a neutral support awaiting the appearance of meaningful marks. Like soils on a site, drawing board materials impact the work. The drawing sheet is an active participant that is already propitious, or, as Chinese calligrapher Li Yang-ping wrote, excellent drawing paper is “generative” (sheng-chih) in that even when unmarked, it is not empty because fine paper is “endowed with life like fertile soil.” Paper’s qualities can inspire the consideration of a particular site’s qualities. (Emmns, 2019: p. 35)[iv]
Li Yang-ping draws attention to two aspects that deal with the materiality of the drawing surface.
First, the very materiality of the surface is generative by itself. The analogy with soil points towards a process of cultivation or actively working with the substrate. Like Frascari’s notion of “sedimentation”, the architectural idea requires a slow seeping-in and settling of its various aspects (Frascari, 2009). This growth process requires a physical locus, or “space” in which ideas develop. Again, De Certeau has taken up this theme, describing the space of writing (and drawing) as un espace propre or “proper space” (De Certeau, 1988: pp. 134–135; see also Paans and Pasel, 2018). The drawing surface provides such a proper, well-defined space. In it, ideas acquire a formal shape, yet their lived meaning is equally tangible as well. But ideas require this space to grow, flourish and to be properly interpreted as ideas or conditions. Not coincidentally, there is a direct link here to the idea of a designated, sacred space:
Sacred space marks a break in homogeneity of undifferentiated space and provides a spatial orientation through which a world is founded. In the double operation of detaching and reframing, the ground re-appears as the site in its discontinuity. (Emmons, 2019: p. 35)
Like the architectural image that Pallasmaa alludes to, the drawing surface becomes a carefully differentiated site for thinking and world-building alike.[iv] Demarcated as a space that qualitatively differs from its surroundings, the drawing surface acquires its special character. Put differently, we may approach it as a generative habitat or cognitive ecosystem. It is a space in which the conditions for world-building, thinking-through-gestures and organized visual experience are nurtured and developed. Above all, it is a space in which ideas are powerfully condensed and concentrated, forcing them to assume a shape.[vi]
As I’ve discussed, from its very inception, drawing by hand involved the material of its surface, but it was only with the rise of descriptive geometry that the surface as neutral plane or projective background appears. The focus shifts from the interplay between line and surface towards the precision of the contents that are depicted. In digital drawing, this conception of the background as neutral space is ubiquitous, because the practice of drawing takes place on an empty artboard or blank modelling space. However, as Peter Cook argues, the drawing surface is anything but passive:
Such [visual] indulgence allows the whole surface of the drawing to reach out to the observer, never letting one rest for a second, and somewhat in the manner of an illustrative cartoon feeds in many intriguing and diverting minutiae. (Cook, 2014: p. 163)
The surface reaches out and invites one in, never resting but always suggesting something new and fascinating. We might see it like a space or habitat for thought, rather than a flat canvas. It is more like a world than a visual representation. And, one should add, exactly this characteristic makes it possible to inhabit it. The surface must be world-like to engage with. It must involve the onlooker, turning them from spectators into participants.
Understanding the drawing surface as a generative habitat brings us to the second point that Li Yang-ping raises: the drawing surface truly is generative. Perhaps unintentionally, Yang-ping echoes classical Chinese thinking on painting. The idea is that the drawing surface is a space (topos) where aspects of ideas can be made to settle and to spring up (Jullien, 2016: p. 49). Especially when sketches are allusive, incomplete, open and generally in a phase of exploration, this dynamic is at work.
This notion resonates with the classical notion of a “figure-ground phenomenon” introduced by early Gestalt psychology (Koffka, 1936; Maas, 2019). However, in this case, we should interpret the analogy that the surface is a “ground” or a “fertile soil” quite literally. The ground is not a static foundation against which a figure dynamically appears, but it is the condition of possibility for the figure to appear at all, to stand in a demarcated space and to become an object of inquiry. However, this object hovers in a strange realm that seems imaginal rather than real:
It is the process of transforming the actual spatial datum, the canvas or paper surface, into a virtual space, creating the primary illusion of artistic vision. This first reorientation is so important that some painters who have become keenly and consciously aware of it tend to be satisfied with the mere creation of space, regardless of anything further to be created in its virtual dimensions—like Malevich, enamored of the magic squares that, after all, yield space and only space. (Langer, 1953: p. 80)
Modern art discovered the space within the canvas and moved consequently away from drawing as a form of pictorial representation. Correspondingly, the artistic—or designerly –gaze is by definition a distortion or semblance. From this point of view, it is strange that drawing by hand is on one hand equated with visual representation, while the modern mind realized all the time that the drawing surface suggests depth and space. In architectural design, however, the two issues touch: on one hand, design proposals have to be codified and communicated; on the other hand, they have to utilize the “space of the drawing” to explore and develop ideas, embracing the suggestive potentials of the drawing surface.
The designerly gaze introduces often viewpoints that do not exist in the real world, but that suggest a kind of spatiality or hidden order. The purely pictorial character of drawing is enlarged by an explorative, suggestive hue or tone. Because these viewpoints are introduced on a canvas or drawing surface, that surface becomes the space of architectural thought, experimentation and creation. Alberto Peréz-Goméz expands on the hidden complexity residing in this idea: the topos is a space in the world of lived experience and forms an integral part of our interaction with it (Peréz-Goméz, 2016: pp. 154–155). As Peréz-Goméz argues, architectural creation required the inscription of marks (grapheíen) into lived space (topos). However, in order for the inscription to be effective, the place itself must be respected und thoroughly understood. For classical architecture, this meant grasping it in all its complexity. So, the surface becomes a stand-in for the world outside, a place where the interaction between the new and the existing unfolds through architectural meaning. However, we would miss a crucial point if we thought that the inscription is just a passive trace.
NOTES
[i] See (Güss, Ahmed, and Dörner, 2021) for an overview of da Vinci’s drawings in relation to his creative process and their generative potential.
[ii] Ingold cites Paul Klee, who makes a similar point in his notebooks.
[iii] We should also notice here that the embodiment of the drawer is of enormous importance. Drawing by hand is always related to our sense of inhabiting spaces. As such, every drawing is by necessity perspectival: it is made by an author who necessarily inhabots a first-person viewpoint. See (Tversky and Hard, 2009).
[iv] Emmons is citing Li Yang-ping, The Nine Generative Fa, or Chiu sheng-fa, as quoted in (Hay, 1985: p. 98).
[v] Notice here the close similarity to the symbolic act of tracing the first line for a city, divining the space in which a city is to be built, or even the on-site drawing of a Medieval cathedral. See (Luce, 2009). For a cognitive science perspective on organizing space, see (Tversky, 2010).
[vi] Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger is known to have said that he liked to condense his sketching on A3 format paper. Apparently, he held that the spatial constraint imposed by the paper format concentrates the thinking process.
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