Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing
Michael
Graves & Associates
IT
has become fashionable in many architectural circles to declare the death of
drawing. What has happened to our profession, and our art, to cause the
supposed end of our most powerful means of conceptualizing and representing
architecture?
The
computer, of course. With its tremendous ability to organize and present data,
the computer is transforming every aspect of how architects work, from
sketching their first impressions of an idea to creating complex construction
documents for contractors. For centuries, the noun “digit” (from the Latin
“digitus”) has been defined as “finger,” but now its adjectival form,
“digital,” relates to data. Are our hands becoming obsolete as creative tools?
Are they being replaced by machines? And where does that leave the
architectural creative process?
Today
architects typically use computer-aided design software with names like AutoCAD
and Revit, a tool for “building information modeling.” Buildings are no longer
just designed visually and spatially; they are “computed” via interconnected
databases.
I’ve
been practicing architecture since 1964, and my office is not immune. Like most
architects, we routinely use these and other software programs, especially for
construction documents, but also for developing designs and making
presentations. There’s nothing inherently problematic about that, as long as
it’s not just that.
Architecture
cannot divorce itself from drawing, no matter how impressive the technology
gets. Drawings are not just end products: they are part of the thought process
of architectural design. Drawings express the interaction of our minds, eyes
and hands. This last statement is absolutely crucial to the difference between
those who draw to conceptualize architecture and those who use the computer.
Of
course, in some sense drawing can’t be dead: there is a vast market for the
original work of respected architects. I have had several one-man shows in
galleries and museums in New York and elsewhere, and my drawings can be found
in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art
and the Cooper-Hewitt.
But
can the value of drawings be simply that of a collector’s artifact or a pretty
picture? No. I have a real purpose in making each drawing, either to remember
something or to study something. Each one is part of a process and not an end
in itself. I’m personally fascinated not just by what architects choose to draw
but also by what they choose not to draw.
For
decades I have argued that architectural drawing can be divided into three
types, which I call the “referential sketch,” the “preparatory study” and the
“definitive drawing.” The definitive drawing, the final and most developed of
the three, is almost universally produced on the computer nowadays, and that is
appropriate. But what about the other two? What is their value in the creative
process? What can they teach us?
The
referential sketch serves as a visual diary, a record of an architect’s
discovery. It can be as simple as a shorthand notation of a design concept or
can describe details of a larger composition. It might not even be a drawing
that relates to a building or any time in history. It’s not likely to represent
“reality,” but rather to capture an idea.
These
sketches are thus inherently fragmentary and selective. When I draw something,
I remember it. The drawing is a reminder of the idea that caused me to record
it in the first place. That visceral connection, that thought process, cannot
be replicated by a computer.
The
second type of drawing, the preparatory study, is typically part of a
progression of drawings that elaborate a design. Like the referential sketch,
it may not reflect a linear process. (I find computer-aided design much more
linear.) I personally like to draw on translucent yellow tracing paper, which
allows me to layer one drawing on top of another, building on what I’ve drawn
before and, again, creating a personal, emotional connection with the work.
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2 of 2)
With
both of these types of drawings, there is a certain joy in their creation,
which comes from the interaction between the mind and the hand. Our physical
and mental interactions with drawings are formative acts. In a handmade
drawing, whether on an electronic tablet or on paper, there are intonations,
traces of intentions and speculation. This is not unlike the way a musician might
intone a note or how a riff in jazz would be understood subliminally and put a
smile on your face.
I
find this quite different from today’s “parametric design,” which allows the
computer to generate form from a set of instructions, sometimes resulting in
so-called blob architecture. The designs are complex and interesting in their
own way, but they lack the emotional content of a design derived from hand.
Years
ago I was sitting in a rather boring faculty meeting at Princeton. To pass the
time, I pulled out my pad to start drawing a plan, probably of some building I
was designing. An equally bored colleague was watching me, amused. I came to a
point of indecision and passed the pad to him. He added a few lines and passed
it back.
The
game was on. Back and forth we went, drawing five lines each, then four and so
on.
While
we didn’t speak, we were engaged in a dialogue over this plan and we understood
each other perfectly. I suppose that you could have a debate like that with
words, but it would have been entirely different. Our game was not about
winners or losers, but about a shared language. We had a genuine love for
making this drawing. There was an insistence, by the act of drawing, that the
composition would stay open, that the speculation would stay “wet” in the sense
of a painting. Our plan was without scale and we could as easily have been
drawing a domestic building as a portion of a city. It was the act of drawing
that allowed us to speculate.
As
I work with my computer-savvy students and staff today, I notice that something
is lost when they draw only on the computer. It is analogous to hearing the
words of a novel read aloud, when reading them on paper allows us to daydream a
little, to make associations beyond the literal sentences on the page. Similarly,
drawing by hand stimulates the imagination and allows us to speculate about
ideas, a good sign that we’re truly alive.
Michael Graves is an architect and an
emeritus professor at Princeton.
A version of this op-ed appeared
in print on September 2, 2012, on page SR5 of the New York edition with the
headline: Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing.
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