DRAW WHAT YOU KNOW

Peter Eisenman:

“…to allow the subject to have a vision of space that can no longer be put together in the normalizing, classicizing or traditional construct of vision.”   “A possible first step in conceptualizing this “other” space, would be to detach what one sees from what one knows.”  (italics added)

He is talking about his scaling methodology.  This is where various geographic, geologic, historic, etc., layers are superimposed on one another.  The result is unexpected interfaces of the various geometries, from which an architecture is then developed.

Please re-read the above passage, with Transparent Drawing in mind.

A representational depiction mandates that you draw what your senses, in this case the sense of seeing,  give you.  Because objects, things and buildings are opaque, you can’t see thru them.  So representational depiction mandates that you draw only what you can see.  We are taught to draw what we see.  Yet so much of what you can see is invisible.

Transparent Drawing mandates that we draw what we know.  In the case of an existing structure or object, we know what we can’t see, because we walk around it and take photos.  In the case of a structure or object we are designing, we draw what we know of how it will work.

In a way, it seems silly to approach drawing from only what you can see.

The key is to separate the seeing from the knowing.  We need to draw what is invisible to our sensory input of seeing.  And when we draw what we can’t see, knowledge becomes visible to our thinking.

When this is achieved, you have Transparent Drawing.

1.  Eisenman, Peter.  Written Into The Void;  Selected Writings, 1990-2004.  Yale University Press.  New Haven.  pp 35, 37

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