Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Drawing Position

2009; Routledge; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13264820903341639

1755-0475

Gevork Hartoonian,

Architecture and Computational Design

Abstract This essay discusses the implications of the perspectival shift concerning a rotation in the position of the body vis-à-vis the surface of drawing. Whereas formerly most architects faced downwards looking onto a blank drawing paper, today they face a computer screen, similar to a painter standing in front of a canvas. Exploring the discursive transformation from disegno to trompe, and to what is called “world picturing”, the intention is to suggest how the organic expressionism permeating digital architecture today may result from a reversal in the aforementioned rotation. Drawings produced by digital means require a seated position whereby the face parallels the screen and the image is experienced in a painterly fashion. The level of drawing is horizontal: that of painting vertical. Walter Benjamin, 1917 Notes 1. James S. Ackerman, Origins, Imitations, Conventions, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, pp. 15–16. 2. See Robert William's “Introduction”, in Art, Theory and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 4–5. 3. David Leatherbarrow, “Showing What Otherwise Hides Itself”, Harvard Design Magazine, 6 (Fall 1998): 51. 4. I am paraphrasing Leonardo da Vinci quoted in William, “Introduction”, p. 16. 5. On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, Ontology of Construction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 6. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. J. Rykwert, N. Leach and R. Tavernor, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988, p. 34. 7. William, “Introduction”, p. 75. 8. Alina Payne, The Architectural Treatises in the Italian Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 68. 9. I am benefiting from Raymond Quek, “Drawing Adam's Navel”, in M. Frascari, J. Hale and B. Starkey (eds.), From Models to Drawings, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 43–63. 10. Leatherbarrow, “Showing What Otherwise Hides Itself”, p. 53. 11. William, “Introduction”, p. 47. 12. Robin Evans, The Projective Cast, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, p. 180. 13. Evans, The Projective Cast, p. 206. 14. Evans, The Projective Cast, pp. 220–239. 15. Bernard Cache, “Gottfried Semper: Stereotomy, Biology, and Geometry”, Perspecta, 33, (2002): 86. 16. Marco Frascari, “A Reflection on Paper and Its Virtue within the Material and Invisible Factures of Architecture”, in Frascari et al., From Models to Drawings, p. 29. 17. Here I am thankful to a reviewer's comment on the first draft of this essay. 18. Cache, “Gottfried Semper”, p. 82. 19. Alberto Perez Gomez, “Questions of Representation: the Poetic Origin of Architecture,” in Frascari et al., From Models to Drawings, p. 12. 20. Stanislaus von Moos, Album La Roche, New York: The Monacelli Press, 1997, p. 55. 21. Walter Benjamin, “Painting and Graphic Arts”, in M. Bullock and M.W. Jennings (eds.), Walter Benjamin, Selected Writing, vol. 1 1913–1926, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 82. 22. Eve Allen Boui, Painting as Model, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999, p. 179. 23. Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, p. 148. 24. T. Guillerme, H. Verin and S. Sartarelli, “The Archaeology of Section”, Perspecta, 25 (1989): 238. 25. Benjamin, “Painting and Graphic Arts”, p. 82. 26. Leatherbarrow, “Showing What otherwise Hides Itself”, p. 52. 27. Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, p. 155. 28. This reading, according to Leo Steinberg, is a better substitute for 12 other alternatives discussed in his dissertation. See Leo Steinberg, Borromini's San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane, New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1977, p. 43. 29. Steinberg, Borromini's San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane, p. 80. 30. Quoted in Alina Payne, “Architecture, Ornament and Pictorialism: Notes on the Relationship between the Arts from Wölfflin to Le Corbusier”, in Karen Koehler (ed.), The Built Surface, vol. 2, London: Ashgate Publishing, 2002, p. 57. 31. Perez-Gomez, “Question of Representation in Models”, p. 21. 32. Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture”, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt, New York: Harper and Row, 1977, p. 134. 33. Hal Foster, “Image Building”, Artforum, 43, 2 (October 2004), republished in Anthony Vidler (ed.), Architecture Between Spectacle and Use, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 164–179. 34. Hal Foster, “Image Building”, pp. 164–179. 35. Aranda/Lasch, Tooling, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006, p. 9. 36. Aranda/Lasch, Tooling, p. 7. 37. Here I am benefiting from Fried, Why Photography Matters, p. 272. 38. Kurt W. Forster, “The Architect of Incalculable”, in G. Beltramini and I. Zamier (eds.), Carlo Scarpa: Architecture and Design, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2007, p. 22. 39. On the subject of the “dressed-up” see Gevork Hartoonian, Ontology of Construction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. See also Gevork Hartoonian, “The Fabric of Fabrication”, Textile, Journal of Cloth and Culture, 4, 3 (Fall 2006): 270–291. 40. Kenneth Frampton in conversation with Abraham, in L. Neild, X. Ruan and R. Francis-Jones (eds.), Skyplane, Sydney: UNSW, 2009, p. 72.