Opening Up the Space of Drawing: Lines and the Locus of Creation in Architectural Design, #5.

“Architectural sketches” (Author, 2022)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Opening Up the Space of Drawing Again

2. Structure and Argument

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 fifth installment, contains section 4.3.

But you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of this essay, including the REFERENCES, by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download tab.

An earlier version of this essay was previously published as (Paans, 2024a), except for the Introduction, which was written specifically for APP.

4.3. From lines-as-marks to lines-as-processes

How intertwined and complex this process of bodily activation through lines is, can be gauged from a passage from A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. In it, they discuss the nature of lines:

Lines of writing conjugate with other lines, life lines, lines of luck or misfortune, lines productive of the variation of the line of writing itself, lines that are between the lines of writing. Perhaps the novella has its own way of giving rise to and combining these lines, which nonetheless belong to everyone and every genre. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: p. 192)

Although this text can be interpreted in several different ways, it seems possible to derive the following from it: the drawing surface organizes and aligns visual and experiential phenomena through the medium of the line. Lines involve concepts and ideas, but also equally affects and emotions or oblique allusions. Even the variation inherent in the “line” itself emerges because it meets, diverges from and crosses various other lines. For instance, consider a musical composition in which rhythm, melody, and counterpoint form three individual lines that jointly constitute its structure. The line is active in the sense that it structures the topos in which it appears. It is an agent of thinking and producing, giving rise to variation and movement, and involving the embodied mind in its motion and productive power.

While structural elements cohere into the formal structure or geometry of a work, this structure co-extends well into the realm of affect. Deleuze and Guattari even go so far as to say that “figures are never separable from the affectations befalling them” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: p. 212). So, geometry is grounded on a primitive “protogeometry” in which we cannot think of figures without also thinking about the effects they exert on us. We can envision the protogeometry as an abstract space of events or occurrences. This space contains all the elements that are expressed in the drawn line. As such, it is open to interpretation and exploration.

The expressive qualities of lines invite forms of thinking that are freely hypothetical, yet not directly subjected to any rigorous examination. In the same way that a building can be said to be “dynamic,” “swooping,” or “sleek,” the lines of the drawing evoke sensible qualities that bring associations to mind. However, even as these lines and figures are not depicting anything specific yet, they encourage the mind to indulge in them. They are saturated with possible meanings that find allusive and oblique expression:

[T]he hypothesis emerges as autonomous critical activity, no longer bound by the repetitious cycles of testing and validation to which is it subjected in other fields. Its mere conjecture is rescued from the pejorative, recast as the pleasurable reverie of the thinking mind engaged in nascent speculation. Released from the stranglehold of teleological knowledge production, it is possible to discern specific properties or characteristics within the hypothesis that, in turn, point to certain critical operations at play within the practice of drawing. (Cocker, 2017: p. 98)

The mere conjecture that takes place during drawing is directly related to its core characteristics: the unfolding play of thoughts and notions occurring in the mind is almost directly transmitted into traces that appear on the surface or topos. Still, the drawn line is not yet subjected to the regimen of conceptual thinking or critical argumentation. It is an “open-ended sign” that can still grow and develop in all directions and that may evoke feelings rather than precise, well-formulated considerations.[i] This does not mean that drawing can never be evidential. Drawing by hand is not merely a tool for evoking atmospheres or emotive responses. Indeed, it requires a structure that is freely amenable to reasoned thought, if it is to be useful at all. Peter Cook describes it very precisely:

For me, there is the delightful experience of carrying out a process that can enhance the primary decisions (of size, position, figure or direction), with such a mobile and extensive addition of evidence. It is as if the first part of the illustration is being illustrated by the second. (Cook, 2014: p. 172)

Likewise, the openness of the mind introduces a state of reverie or pleasurable inhabitation or wandering. Indwelling in the drawing is an act—and literally, one draws oneself into it. Layer after layer, new evidence of the usefulness of an idea is compiled, reworked and massaged. Old notions are illuminated in a process of drawing their consequences out.

Once we have engaged with the drawing, we find that certain ideas or notions are “springing up” and “settling.” As Frascari emphasized, architectural ideas settle gradually, thereby “sedimenting” themselves. The French philosopher and sinologist François Jullien provides an alternative conception of this notion. Visual representations that are open and seemingly unfinished are necessarily not determined completely. Not every element in them is finished, unambiguous, or clearly demarcated. As such, the representation remains “at work.” Because it is in an active, working state, it invites new readings and stimulates thinking. As Jullien argues, new elements “spring up” out of the drawing. Those elements that “settle” are determined for the time being:

[T]his fundamental fact–that the determination (any determination) grasps what is settled and not the springing up; that the definition is situated downstream rather than upstream, in a state of flatness that is sterile and not fecund. (Jullien, 2016: p. 49)

Observing someone drawing by hand with intent shows how much concentration flows into it.[ii] One could pleasurably lose oneself in the activity. The psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi recognized his pleasurable indwelling in his seminal study on “flow states” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). Flow states are “autotelic”: that is, they become ends-in-themselves while one executes them. They invite full involvement, reverie, detour, play, and immersion. Once again, recall how the geometric shape appears against a background of a protogeometry – the abstract space of possibilities and affects that is latently present in the drawing. The movement of reverie and immersion explores this protogeometrical space, loosing oneself in a free, speculative and hypothesizing form of visual navigation. They also provide a cognitive entrance into the subject matter, as they fuse action and awareness, joining both capacities to reach moments of insight (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013: pp. 101–102). Drawing by hand is the quintessential flow state—in it, one must bodily enact intentions and ideas in fluid lines, accurate gestures, and expressive traces. All this requires a certain aesthetic sensibility, reflective capacity and acumen.

Figure 7: Purely abstract overlapping structures in a sketch study. The lines are non-figurative, yet they are expressive and evocative. (Author, 2019)

One of the advantages of this dynamic fusion is that it becomes easier to focus one’s energy towards the external world, thereby aiding a deep involvement with the surrounding environment and highlighting the capacity to “see” new possibilities (see Fig. 7 above). Indeed, as David Bohm argued in his work on creativity, the capacity to perceive the new into the existing order of things is what underlies creativity as such; the novelty that is produced lies not only in making new objects or plans, but in conceptualizing relationships that were “hidden in plain sight.”For designers, this is a very familiar thought: the designed object is not realized yet but has to be “drawn out.” Some of its desired properties are (dimly) known and are projected on a real-life context. In designing, the “ideal” is overlayed on the “real” and treated as a viable or fascinating possibility (Nelson and Stoltermann, 2014: p. 31).

A way of productively elaborating these thoughts is to say that lines are processes rather than marks or symbols. Drawn lines suggest not just movements; they are movements. They are so in a double sense.

First, we require bodily gestures to draw lines, whether this concerns lines in manual or digital space. The body must enact the line before it becomes visible. The tip of the pen traces the movement on a surface, which, as we have seen, is a topos. Such gestures are not part of our daily repertoire of motions. They fall in a different category than doing the dishes, driving a car or dusting the bookcase. They are “invented” for a very specific case and a very specific situation. Such “invented” gestures are unique, as they respond to a particular context in a particular manner (Kang and Tversky, 2016). These line-as-processes are deliberately enacted, and change therefore not only the surface, but the drawer as well. The “subject of design” acquires a level of mimetic awareness by tracing out the precise contours of an idea (Paans 2024a; Sheets-Johnston, 2013: p. 24; Goldin-Meadow, 2010: p. 665). Enacting the line leaves a trace in the memory as well as on the paper (Ingold, 2013: p. 162).

Second, lines invite movement. The eyes tend to actively follow the lines and stimulate embodied movement. Langer points to the fact that

[m]ovement and lines are intimately related in conception, as also lines and growth…. A person “writing in air” makes letters appear to our imagination, invisible lines that grow before us though our eyes see only his moving hand. (Langer, 1953: pp. 64–65)

A line that seems dynamic is not just a visual mark with swooping characteristics attached to it. The line and its dynamic characteristic cannot be decoupled – the line is the movement, and is as such the conception of an idea. It is the invitation towards creative pursuit:

Architectural lines are material, spatial, cultural and temporal occurrences of refined multi-sensorial and emotional understandings of architecture. Architectural lines create a graphesis, a course of actions based on factures by which architects actualize future and past architecture into representations.

Architectural drawings must not be understood as visualizations of buildings, but as essential architectural factures. (Frascari, 2009: p. 203)

Frascari uses the term “facture” (It.: fattura), meaning “to make” or “to do.” Rather than being illustrations or depictions, architectural drawings are embodiment of the “events that gave rise to them” (Frascari, 2009: p. 203). Each line is an event that occurs in real-time and that has to be bodily traced out in the real world. Such lines are gesturally acted out into the world, and it is not far-fetched to view lines and drawings as actors in the creative process. Indeed, the term “active image” is entirely appropriate. The drawing acts and is acted upon.

Like the graph or statistic, the line exerts a certain fascination, because it promises the possibility of “drawing together” otherwise disparate observations into a single gesture. As Latour points out, observers working in laboratories noticed the obsession of scientists with visual representation (Latour, 1990). The neatness of the graph or curve allows scientists to extract particular insights from a messy mass of data, aligning them in visual structures that are cognitively accessible and convincing. The graph, or the plotted function, is the essentialization of complex phenomena that occur in the real world. This is why statistical curves have such a rhetoric potential: they condense otherwise disparate phenomena and events in a single visual gesture that seems stripped from anything superfluous.

A similar process unfolds in hand drawings in architectural design. As visuals, they exert a certain rhetorical force, even to the degree that hand drawings of great architects acquire an often-mythical status, but equally to the degree that the drawing surface becomes a site to explore. The single drawn line unites disparate aspects of an architectural idea:

The fruitful vagueness ruling architectural graphesis comes from the ambiguity embodied in the Latin spell: nullo dies sine linea, where linea (line), an heuristic device, must be understood as a line of writing, as a line in a drawing or as the pulling of a line on a construction site, but not as linearity. (Frascari, 2009: p. 202)

The line is a movement but is not always linear. It is a projection, a meandering search, a demarcation or condition. The line as a heuristic device serves the function of searching and navigating. Lines can be used to navigate a space of possibilities or to articulate a developing idea that seems only barely accessible. We should not couch this process merely in terms of decision theory. The so-called “first generation of designer researchers” did so, but they overlooked the autonomy of the drawn line.[iii] Beyond its heuristic function, the line has a poetic and expressive power of its own.

The expressive power of lines stems from the fact that we catch the mind in movement when we draw. In almost no other activity is the link between mind and hand so short and its feedback so direct (Van Den Berghe, 2013). However critical we may be about regarding drawings as traces one aspect of this conception is very useful: the trace left behind by the drawing hand represents most faithfully a developing idea, expressed in a non-linguistic mode. As I’ve argued, drawings by hand are intensely active. They are not just illustrations of works but are themselves works (Ingold, 2007: p. 164). The swooping line is the conception of an idea, not a line with a certain “dynamicism” attached to it. Lines continue to play a cognitive role long after the drawer has finished working on them. All this points to the intimate conjunction of thinking, conceiving and drawing. Frascari speaks of a “a sapient working together of writing, drawing, and construction lines” (Frascari, 2009: p. 210). As we can freely switch between visual, textual, gestural, haptic, and verbal modes of expression, the drawing becomes an indispensable site of articulation.

Articulation, like sedimentation, is a gradual process. It requires time and the possibility of settling for one expression or the other; or, letting an idea rest and allowing various aspects to spring up again. Pallasmaa has in this regard spoken of the “hesitancy of drawing.” Not every line is self-certain, swooping or even useful. The processes of transmitting thoughts to paper, and of exploring thoughts through drawing requires a delay, an action of “understanding-as” (Gadamer, 2013: p. 83). Every time a line is drawn, it can be understood as something to which it points or to which its orients the onlooker, however imperfectly and indirectly.

Yet, discipline and exercise are required to draw well and to imbue lines with an affective force that makes them truly come alive, thereby igniting their generative potential. In classical Chinese philosophy, the aesthetic characteristic that renders drawings effective is known as “shi,” and it plays a major role in aesthetic cognition:

[I]t is shi that “gives life” and that makes the slightest dot or stroke vibrate, as if we were reliving the moment of its execution. Shi always enhances what would be mere empty representation without it, for shi gives depth to a representation and exceeds its concrete limitations by revealing within the actualized static form, a dimension of perpetual, soaring flight. (Jullien, 1999: p. 78)

The art of sketching centers around evolving from one property of the drawing to the other— freely to navigate the new, diaphanous space that emerges between the elements. Jullien identifies a “divergence that is provoked” within the work. Each new line extends the play of forces and the architectural design process in its entirety.

Figure 8: Two quick “form and flow” studies. Even with these rudimentary sketches, the contrast between flows and massive building volumes becomes tangible. (Author, 2019)

This explains why some architectural sketches have such an expressive and creative appeal: their unfinishedness keeps them effective. They exert tangible generative effects, allowing the designer to organically explore the ideas they suggest (see Fig. 8 above). The more one finishes and refines, the more the drawing becomes settled, losing the critical edge of its generative power (Jullien, 2012: pp. 69–70).[iv] Its incompleteness causes its efficacy:

In revealing to us the power of incompletion (or by revealing that plenitude is not completion), the sketch makes us feel the infinite richness of the indefinite, or the fecundity of the beyond and of possibility – in short, what we ordinarily understand as the powers of the virtual. (Jullien, 2012: p. 61)

The “indefinite” is the operative realm of creation: the domain of (visual) suggestion and springing-up as opposed to the domain of settling down and defining. Openness, creative divergence and unconstrained expressivity are integral ingredients of its visual appearance. While the representational paradigm views drawings as the endpoint in a determinative process, Jullien emphasizes the fact that “availability” or “space for development” is the most effective asset that the drawing possesses (Jullien, 2012: pp. 69–70). Once a drawer realizes how much can still be changed, and how many possibilities are still waiting to be worked out, can the creative process unfold and open up again.

NOTES

[i] See also (Suwa and Tversky, 2003) for a discussion of semantic saturation and (Hasenhütl, 2010) for a discussion of the role of hypotheses in architectural design. Cook uses terminology that is closely related to the idea of “settling” and “springing-up,” for example, when he says the following:

[W]e must respect the person who, having reached a state of clarification, sees the need to overlay another objective or criterion, and so the progress of the work is like a mist forming and clearing—and then forming again. The act of drawing, and particularly free-moving “scribbled” drawing, enables this. (Cook, 2014: p. 169)

[ii] See also (List, 2009) on this topic. He describes it as “nichtfestgelegtheit” or “not-being-finally-defined.”

[iii] This term is commonly used to describe design researchers working during the 1960s and 1970s. Seminal figures are Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, Horst Rittel, and Charles Eastman.

[iv] (Cook, 2014: p. 88) is critical of such an account. To my mind, he is right insofar as not every sketch is equally generative, and not any finished drawing refuses to exert tangible effects. Moreover, there is certainly much to be said about the relations between sketches and for instance technical drawings that exceeds the scope of this essay.

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