JOGGING FOR BUILDINGS

Lockard in his book Design Drawing states, “Designers must be professional perceivers. They must learn to perceive their environment comprehensively…” “Drawing is a primary means of developing this needed perceptual ability.” (1)

When you find a building or object that you are interested in, you need to quickly size up roughly how it works. You must be as comprehensive as possible while you are perceiving this building. This understanding will then help to direct the photographs that you need to take so as to be able to draw with reasonable fidelity later. Many times, the ability to take your photos from either end of the structure will suffice. Yet it is important to record with your camera as many salient features of the building that you can. This might be a focus on the topography, or an interesting quirk in how the roofs connect. So although you cannot have sufficient foresight to record all of these features with your camera, if you mentally construct roughly how the building works as you take photos, you will have enough information.

One problem with ordinary buildings is that you cannot go to Google Images later to fill in the blanks. As we have seen, you can utilize GI for famous structures. I did this for example with my drawing of the New Museum; I had to use Google Images to understand how the back of the building worked, as I only had the opportunity to view it from one side. Yet with an ordinary building, your only record that you will draw from is the photos that you take. So use your form intelligence to take your photos wisely.

This building caught my attention in Turkey. You really have to admit that this is a very cool building.  The colors.  The subtle curved forms.  The way it is cut into the topography.  As usual, in the flow of a modern day trip, there was not time for leisurely photo taking. In this instance, after we parked the car and before we started on our hike thru the Ihlara Valley, I had to do a bit of jogging so as to capture this building from both ends. This activity might engender perturbed stares from any number of people, family members, a local pedestrian, etc. But never mind that. Just take the pictures that you have to, and if you end up a bit sweaty because you had to jog up a dusty road, well that is just part of being a perceiver in the modern analogue / digital age.

(1) Lockhard. “Design Drawing.” Pepper Publishing; Tuscon, AZ. 1974. P. 34