ARCH: Drawing Spatial Movement

CONTENT / Movement is fundamental to our experience of the spaces we inhabit, but design can fail to fully engage with this simple truth. Our representational traditions seem caught in ambitions for static portrayal, capturing our world as frozen moments in a seeming denial of time. So, when we begin designing the drawing tools we turn to are not necessarily promoting ambitions that contemplate the dynamics of everyday activity which our environment consists of. There is also little sense of our place within these drawings.

In our workshop we will begin a critical engagement with movement, building understanding of the nature of dynamic spatial experience, such as perceptual border zones of spatial vagueness, through direct engagement, teasing out implications. We will begin with a walk of fixed time and length, but in numerous locations, engaging with neighbourhoods near and familiar to each workshop participant. We will then start to untangle our experience and evolve our drawing techniques and tools to begin to construct a new vocabulary for dynamic representation. Through this we will start to challenge conventional technique and offer drawn frameworks which can be inhabited by our experience, offer our presence a voice to within the drawing.

AIMS / The aim of our workshop is to critically examine our experience of movement through space and begin to identify means to subvert traditional modes of representation in order to represent this. We therefore aim to identify modes of drawing and representational tools that can enable us to capture movement space so these might offer frameworks for future design proposals informed by movement.

METHOD / We will start with a shared ‘walk’ in the same time but multiple places. On route we will begin to identify perhaps previously overlooked phenomena. What do we notice, what starts to blur or fade, how do we experience these spaces differently in movement? We will experiment with capturing our movement through different means such as drawing, photography, photogrammetry, lidar depending on facilities available. We will evolve these evidences towards a representational language for dynamism

1st day: Introduction
Lecture: Spatial movement and drawing
We will divide into internationally diverse groups for a ‘walk’ taken at the same time for the same time period yet in disparate locations. Each group member will record this using one of a range of techniques agreed within the group. The ‘walk’ constitutes moving through space in the manner and at the speed you are familiar with for the set time.

2nd day: The findings from the ‘walk’ recording are critically analysed and key findings identified. The phenomena each group identify as the most intriguing become the focus of the exploration. How might this growing understanding begin to inform how we draw that space? Are we present within the drawing or are we outside of it? How does this start to challenge traditional forms of architectural representation? How might a drawing start to speak of this experience and assist us in designing within it? Review of each groups drawing tools.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Initial introduction at the end of the preceding week

EVALUATION / Develop these actions:

•  Engaging critically with traditional modes of representation, questioning the static world they discuss.
•  Uncovering the variety of spatial experience.
•  Finishing with experimental proposals for drawing techniques which are capable of speaking of our experience of space through movement.

Bibliography /

• Allen & Pearson Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture.
• Robin Evans Translations from Drawings to Building and Other Essays.
• Perez-Gomez, Pelletier Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge.

University of Brighton (UK):

Sarah Stevens (s.stevens2@brighton.ac.uk)

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Bergen School of Architecture (Norway):

Charlotte Erkrath (charlotte@bas.org)