serial consign

This fall, while emailing back and forth with Nicholas Senske, I learned about Kristina Luce, a Ph.D. candidate at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Michigan. Kristina studied environmental design and architecture at Miami University in Ohio and is currently a pre-doctoral fellow at the Getty Research Institute. Her research is dedicated to exploring the role of drawing in architecture and how it has shifted over the last several centuries. There aren't many architectural scholars with whom you can discuss the origins of perspective AND emerging digital paradigms - I simply couldn't resist asking Kristina to take part in a conversation about her work.

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Broadly speaking, your research aspires to forge connections between the birth and development of architectural drawing conventions (i.e. Renaissance thinking on perspective projection) and the evolving computational paradigm. What can we learn about contemporary architecture and drawing by excavating the history of various representation systems?

Well, there are lots of ways to answer this question, but one thing I hope my study does is to show our connectedness to these historic systems even as we move away from them. For nearly a century now, our recognition of the connections between contemporary and historic design has been fraught with contradiction in no small part due to a series of supposed rejections of history throughout the twentieth century (whether that is the Modernists rejecting 19th century eclecticism, or “the Greys” rejecting the International Style, or the more recent expressions rejecting all but the “near now”). And yet, even as we threw the past out, we brought forward our historical methods of design and the frameworks and definitions such methods provide to architecture. Which is to say that recent architects may have condemned historicism, but they rallied around drawing whether it was Le Corbusier proclaiming that the “plan is the generator” or Peter Eisenman developing the design for House VI through axonometric projection.

During the Renaissance when triadic form was adopted (meaning the systematized use of plan, section and elevation as a means to conceive of, represent and transmit architecture), when this new conceptual medium was adopted for architecture, it was no coincidence that the professional role of the architect was also stabilized, that a new form-based aesthetic was accepted, and that the very definition of design as the prefigurement of form was pioneered. When I talk about the core definitions of architecture that are related to drawing, it is these frames I mean, and these have been much more resilient and much less likely to be questioned than those aspects of history that were more ostensibly discarded. That is why I take pains to talk about drawing not only as a representational system, though it is that, but as a conceptual medium because it is through such a system that architecture is abstracted and understood.

[johann heinrich lambert / modified perspectograph / 1752]

While certainly there are links to be made at other historic points, what I see happening in architecture today is a shift in that conceptual medium. On the one hand the shift seems very new since initially architectural software mimicked drawing and only recently has a different computational mode of design become possible. On the other hand, there is a way to see the design theory of the last hundred years as part of the shift, aligning a, perhaps, computational mode of thinking with design before the tools were actually in place. Alan Turing, after all, proposed the computer in concept before it could be built. And so at a minimum what I am trying to do is to look to the Renaissance as the last time a shift in the conceptual medium of architecture took place and to examine it closely in hopes of discerning the structure of the problem posed by such a shift. What did the adoption of drawing involve? Why was it so contentious and slow in occuring? What was at stake for architecture? By looking at this historic moment within the practice of architecture, we can see what is at stake in the current moment a little more clearly.

[digital project - gehry technologies' parametric modeling application, derived from CATIA]

I know you have an active interest in the infrastructure Frank Gehry has built around his architectural practice. How do you see the various projects that operate under his name as signaling the arrival of a "new breed" of architectural practice? Beyond that, what other designers and studios are you looking at?

I think my own pursuits aren’t big enough to encompass many of Gehry’s “projects”, but I am looking at Gehry Technologies as a model of collaboration within architectural practice. I am also looking at Peter Eisenman, Greg Lynn and Evan Douglis. There is a kind of chronological exploration going on with those last three that has to do with my own concentration on abstraction and form which grows out of my analysis of drawing and those architectural qualities it stabilized. I am not sure at the moment how Gehry Technologies fits into my story, although I think it is operating as the avant-garde offering new models for how the discipline of architecture gets practiced.

[lewis tsurumaki lewis architects / fremont hotel - prototype room / 2001]

At a personal level, the design workstation is the epicentre of a designer's universe. It is the space where they spend the most time and the apparatus through which explore design problems. What do you consider to be some of the strengths and shortcomings of drawing (and thinking) in a CAD environment versus on a drafting board?

I am embarrassed to say that outside a few observations that aren’t even mine (the CAD environment handles replicating objects better where the drafting board allows for “sketchy” approximations that can delay resolution, etc.) I’ve spent less time thinking about this question than you might think. Although I would say my project began with more concrete questions like this one, now I suspect we’re not in a position to answer such questions in a substantive way. The historic analog to your question would be to ask what are the advantages and disadvantages of working as a master mason versus as an architect. During the Gothic period, designers worked off of typological models but resisted fixing many of the formal aspects of building. Drawing allowed forms to be prefigured and brought the building under the control of new regulating principles. Together this “specialization” freed architects from the building site allowing them to multiply their presence, working on several buildings simultaneously. Between these two forms of practice, there are differences but knowing whether such traits are advantageous requires that one come down in favor of a particular outcome. Advantageous to what? It assumes a normative practice, which is exactly the thing that is being destabilized in these moments of shift.

We are only just beginning to see the effects that the computer may have on buildings and architectural practice. As the computer’s ability to organize information transforms how the architectural problem is conceived, a similar discourse as that which synchronized drawing and architecture is developing between computation and architecture. New boundaries around the architectural problem and our discipline will be formed. These new limits may or may not uphold the former definitions of architecture, but if and where they do, then we’ll know better what drawing’s advantages are and what the computer offers that drawing cannot. (In case it isn’t apparent, underlying this answer is my belief that drawing can’t simply be seen as a physical act, the recording of a manual gesture, it is instead a larger concept, the very structure of what defines architecture.)

[zaha hadid / abu dhabi performing arts centre proposal / 2007]

3D renderings have become the de facto method of representation through which architects to communicate the experiential quality of their designs to clients and the general public. There is a lot of debate amongst architects and illustrators as to whether these types of drawings should employ photo-realism or remain more abstract to communicate the "essence" of the design intent. Could you comment on this discussion given your knowledge of the history of perspective?

This is precisely one of those questions where the history of drawing does have something to say about current debates. During the Renaissance there was a similar question-with some proponents like Alberti saying that it was the use of non-illusionary drawings like plans and elevations that distinguished the architect. These debates may seem trivial in the light of history, but when we dive into this period we can see that, just as now, the question of what a representation looks like has less to do with looks and more to do with a mode of thinking that in turn defines what architecture is.

Part of the series of shifts we amass under the rubric of the Renaissance involved the development of perspective, but like the technologies of computation, this discovery was not just about picturing. Working out perspective was also a working out a new definition of what constitutes human knowledge. Until this point in history, sensory information, what we saw, heard and felt, was considered illusory. Our senses could deceive us. One thing that perspective did was offer a geometric explanation of sight. Under the right conditions, the ‘correctness’ of perspective could be experimentally determined. The ‘truth’ it offered affirmed visuality as a potential source of knowledge. But orthographic drawings did not reference this visual truth. Instead, they projected a reality that would never be seen, only per/conceived. Although orthographic projection and perspectival projection are geometrically related, although they reference the same geometry that allows them both to be ‘true’ and knowledge producing, orthographic drawing is abstract. It has no apparent connection to visuality. It allows architecture to be defined without a direct reference to the visual, and therefore establishes that the sensibility of architecture is conceptual. Architecture is concept. This is the basic axiom that is accepted during the Renaissance when triadic form gets adopted as the representational convention for architecture. And, I think we can see why there was serious debate and practical compromises that took place within representation for a long time. A lot of architecture gets marginalized when conceptual forms become the primary ‘stuff’ of architectural thinking.

So that brings us to today’s debate, and it isn’t surprising that the issue is being readdressed since so much of the last 500 years within design can be seen as a series of attempts to recalibrate the alliance between architectural conception and the abstraction of drawing with the procedural, physical and sensual aspects of built architecture. Computers are being used to do many things in architecture and in other fields, but when we go to the heart of what computers do, when we look at the core assumption of Boolean logic and the brute strength of computation as a means to organize and process data, then we get a glimpse of how computation is restructuring our definition of what constitutes knowledge. At the very beginning of computation there is an abstraction, from thing to number. Not the analog substitution of drawing but the digital substitution of on/off circuitry. To that extent, it is not surprising that part of the debate right now is that architecture should be understood and represented as the “essence” of its intent, as a representation of its concept. Such a reliance on abstraction upholds the logic that defines computation. But as was the case with the projective geometry that underlies perspective, other definitions of knowledge are spinning out from computation. The computer’s ability to model aspects of reality and generate feedback, its tendency to particle-ize knowledge, its ability to extend our control over space-time expand what approach an architect might take to generating and defining design. These different nuances factor into what is certainly part of the essential debate within architecture today. It may appear that we are only talking about pictures, but I think the reason the debate gets passionate is because we are really offering opinions about what architecture and design are.