Drawing and reality
<p><strong><em>This and following posts are a transcript of a talk I gave at Yale University School of Architecture on 2 March 2018.</em></strong></p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*uXPBlkZhUyilTo1ofhABHg.png" style="height:555px; width:700px" /></p>
<p>Adolfo Natalini (*1941), Superstudio Sketchbook, New York, 1969–1970. Ink on paper. <a href="https://www.drawingmatter.org/sets/portfolios/adolfo-natalini-drawing/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">© The artist.</a></p>
<p>I am going to begin with a quotation from the art critic, John Berger, writing in the <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/art-and-design/2013/05/john-berger-drawing-discovery" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank"><em>New Statesman</em></a><em> </em>on 29 August 1953:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the artist drawing is discovery. … It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to look at the object in front of him, to dissect it in his mind’s eye and put it together again; or, if he is drawing from memory, that forces him to dredge his own mind, to discover the content of his own store of past observations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My reason for beginning with this quotation is to make the point that architectural drawing is fundamentally different to the artistic kind of drawing that Berger describes. Architectural drawing is synthetic, rather than observational, using the marks on the page to bring a design into existence, rather than in recording what already exists. Moreover, architectural drawing is always drawing with a purpose: an instrument rather than and end in itself. Even a highly polished perspectival view, for example, is a tool for showing a building as it might appear when built, rather than a finished work in itself.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@owenhopkins/drawing-and-reality-ed31fd37c180"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>