Melancholic Drawings
“Euclidean Pyramid”
“Celebration of Man”
“Architectural Greeting”
“Euclidean Observatory (Site Plan)”
“Euclidean Observatory (Site Plan)”
“Euclidean Observatory”
“Column Threshold”
“Gravity Gallery (Section)”
“Gravity Gallery (Plan)”
“Phenomenological Gallery (Elevation)”
“Phenomenological Gallery (Plan)”
“The Meeting of Man and Nature Occurs Where Man Attempts To Draw A Circle”
Michael Brussel
Virginia Tech, USA
Miguel Salve
Marywood University, USA
HOMESICK: The Architectural Malady
Camila Mancilla Vera
Virginia Tech, USA
Antinoeion
Michael Ytterberg
MY Architecture, USA
Once, as I drafted a perspective, my mind wandered,and I found that my construction lines had gone astray.As they traveled from station point to plan or pictureplan to horizon without my oversight, the lines foundtheir way to unintended destinations.
I erased the errant lines, but as I did, I wondered (and wandered a bit more) what these lines might be thinking as they followed their preset course procedurally and mechanically through the projection system.Could it be that within the depth of their thickness, the lines considered what might occur if untethered from their obligation? If freed from rote direction, would they play or even attempt escape entirely?
In any case, the episode reminded me that, despiteprojection’s alleged certainty, the improbable occurs
Jim Sullivan
Marywood University, USA
Many years later, as he returned to faculty, the Professor was to remember that distant afternoon when he found himself visiting yet again.
At that time, in public, most would say issues or history, but inprivate among friends, they would say baggage. Do architects have more than most: hopes dashed by unrealized projects, disappointment in those built but compromised, lingering lessons of past teachers, unfulfilled desires to surpass mentors, professional ambitions left to wander, personal commitments unattended, and always the looming figures of history against who we naively measure ourselves?
Or is this simply the price paid for being so often visiting andtherefore so often packing and unpacking?
black red
12. simpler days o2. father
a. past love m. ambiguous lessons
e. unfulfilled desires rr. under another's name
Jim Sullivan
Marywood University, USA
The Site Plan Thinks Itself in My Glasses, and I Am Its Consciousness
The word "drawing" has roots in the Greek words phōtós, meaning light, and graphein, meaning writing or drawing. Thus, photography can be understood as drawing with light. The image I am submitting for this exhibition was captured after finishing a session of teaching an architectural drawing course in the winter of 2023. The temperature was -26°C as I waited for a train. Upon entering the train, the sudden change in temperature caused my glasses to fog, obscuring my vision. I removed them, placing them on my bag, when suddenly, a site plan of trees appeared before me.
In that moment, I questioned whether what I saw could be considered a drawing. Mark Wigley's words came to mind that hand-drawn architectural drawings are shadows of shadows,[1] and that early computer graphics transformed this relationship into shadows of light on the screen. The photo before me resembled those early CAD drawings, with white lines on black screens.
I began to question the agency of my body in this experience. I had not produced this drawing with my hand, yet I recognized it through what Maurice Merleau-Ponty refers to as "physiognomy"—the style, structure, or appearance of things. [2] The image presented itself to me as a site plan, even though my hand had not moved to draw it. My glasses had become neutral receptors of light and air, and my role was merely to perceive this phenomenon. And so, I took a photo. As Cézanne says, "The landscape thinks itself in me… and I am its consciousness."[3] The site plan drew itself in my glasses, an extension of my eye and body, and I became its consciousness.
[1] Mark Wigley, "Black Screens: The Architect's Vision in a Digital Age," in When Is the Digital in Architecture?, ed. Andrew Goodhouse (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2017), 179.
[2] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A. Landes (New York: Routledge, 2012).
[3] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Cézanne’s Doubt," in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, ed. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 77.
Mohammadhossein Moezzi
University of Calgary, Canada