POST-DIGITAL DRAWING

In Metropolis Magazine, Sam Jacob wrote a piece titled Architecture Enters the Age of Post-Digital Drawing.

The concept of the article is that, in the beginning, architects drew.  Then the juggernaut of the machine made them stop.  And now they are drawing again.  Let’s look at the author’s Post-Digital drawing concept from a Transparent Drawing frameset.

I think that we can all agree that the machine has reduced our investigatory powers.  We draw to think.  Our hand moving the pencil on the paper maintains an analogue connection of our thoughts with the physical world.  We build in the physical world.  Etc.  We have mentioned this many times before.  See, for example, the page titled DRAWING IS DEAD.

As the author states, architects became obsessed with slick dimensional computer renderings as they communicated a photographic reality.  This fixation on realism/ simulation / immersion is at the expense of drawing as thinking.  Another way to say this is that we now let the machine do much of our design thinking for us.

It is nice to see the author pay homage to what they call pre-digital or paper architects.  They mention one of our heroes, Superstudio, for example.  Although they might have mentioned architects like STEVEN HOLL, who continue to put pencil to paper.

And I do like some of the phrases that the author constructed to describe the demise of the analogue drawing.  For example, this passage is a nice summary of the effect of the machine:

“With the rise of technology, drawing as a significant architectural act withered away. And as it did, so too did the connection to drawing as a core disciplinary act rather than an expedient way to communicate architecture.”

We’re all agreed.  So far, so good.

Yet the author then goes on to describe a post-digital drawing world using Photoshop and Illustrator.  They talk about the “super-collage possibilities of Photoshop.”  They celebrate the “extreme flatness of Illustrator.”  Really?

So, disappointingly, the Post-digital drawing world that the author advances is, indeed, simply another digital drawing world.  There is some suggestion that the drawing structure is important.  This is the closest that they come to our understanding of transparency.

Even more disappointingly, apparently analogue drawing, drawing as thinking, drawing as problem solving, drawing as not art, is not important.  In fact, there is no mention of drawing as the application of a line with a pencil to a piece of paper.  There is no mention of drawing as the principal vehicle to solve design problems.  There is no mention of the mind – body connection that is only possible with analogue drawing.

The author shows examples of the digital images (I’m sorry, but I can’t bring myself to call these drawings) that these post-digital architects are producing.  See for yourself at the link at the top of the page.  Where is the volumetric space?  Where is the form generation?  Where is the intrigue?

It may very well be that most people, even those who teach drawing courses at prestigious places, will not, ever, get beyond the mesmerizing aura of the digital screen anymore.  In fact, there might be great confusion regarding what a drawing is anymore. The meta text under the title of the article states:

“Setting a design concept to pencil and paper was once considered a core architectural act, but the past two decades’ culture of digital rendering almost killed it. Almost.”

But there is not one analogue drawing in the article!  Nowhere does the author even mention putting pencil to paper as part of the post-digital mindset.  Have we lost our cultural ability to make a distinction between a true analogue drawing and an Illustrator image?

It may very well be that a pulling back from computer generated three dimensional images to a flat Illustrator screenspace might be all that most of us can do.  It might be simply beyond comprehension anymore that, indeed, the most effective way to think is with a piece of paper and a pencil.

1.  Jacob, Sam.  Architecture Enters the Age of Post-Digital Drawing.  Metropolis Magazine.  21 March 2017. Web.  22 March 2017.