JAMAICA DINING ROOM
I did this sketch about 2.5 years ago. It is of a dining room in Jamaica. It is one of the few transparent sketches that I did in situ. I started the sketch during...
Tagged: ANALOGUE DRAWING
FOCUSED PHOTOGRAPHY
Matera, Italy is mind blowing. I think I would like to offer a course which might be titled Form Appreciation. The course would be of benefit to both practicing architects as well as architecture...
DRAWING MACHINES
Since the beginning, machines have been developed with the goal of reducing subjective human interpretation. This thought has been with us since the 17th century, and has basically been unchanged into today. And of...
SCIENTIFIC MODERNISM
This is how scientific discovery happens. Scientific discovery happens when it is observed that nature violates an accepted scientific paradigm. That is to say, when the expectations of a paradigm no longer match nature,...
TANGLED UP IN ART
I saw my Transparent Drawings on a gallery wall. There they were, nicely framed and lit. And all around them were the artworks of artists. I am very happy to have my drawings on...
THE SHELLS WE LIVE IN
We have adopted the word enclosure to describe the objects that we design and draw. Let’s substitute shell for enclosure and see if we derive any further understanding. That is to say, imagine any...
DOES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD EXIST?
Is there a scientific method? This is the question that James Blachowicz asks in their New York Times article. In these pages, we have been questioning the scientific method. For background, see SCIENTIFIC METHOD...
IMAGINATION AND MEMORY
The photographs that we take and the drawings that we make are a form of memory. They are a form of witnessing and seeing. The things that we see; a form, a detail, a...
GRAPHITE AND DIAMOND
Graphite and diamond are both forms of pure carbon. The graphite that we use in our pencils and the diamond that we wear on our fingers is the same stuff. It is just that...
ORIGINS OF TRANSPARENT DRAWING
This drawing is 35 years old. It seems that I started drawing transparently way before I started Transparent Drawing. I was looking thru old 35 mm slides the other day, and I came across...
DESIGN MONEY
Money. Money is the talisman of our self-regard. We carefully monitor the quantity as a way to shape our actions. It is a fundamental societal currency. It is a proxy for gauging societal achievement....
INFINITE PERSPECTIVES
The simultaneous multiple viewpoints represented by Cubism informs our work. For example, this statement from an early French cubist painter in 1912 essentially describes the transparent drawing method; “I see and represent an object,...
BODILESS OBSERVER
The arc of technology is detachment. Each technological breakthrough has come at the expense of our bodily involvement with the world. The more advanced the technology, the greater our physical removal. Name any technological...
GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX
Grammar and syntax are the problem. A few pages ago, we outlined the trajectory of human communication, starting with the oral tradition, moving thru the pictorial tradition, and we left off when we started...
WRITING IS DRAWING
In the beginning, it was oral. The vessel of cultural knowledge, in the beginning, was oracular; humans communicating with each other with sounds that come from their mouths. The traditions and history of cultures...
SCARPA SYNESTHETICS
Carlos Scarpa has always been a hero. So it was with great interest when I came across this passage in Harry Mallgrave’s The Architect’s Brain; Neuroscience, Creativity and Architecture. This quote is attributed to...
SUPERFICIAL IMAGES
Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida have all argued that the dominance of vision in our culture has only served to separate ourselves from the world. While I don’t agree with this premise, I do understand...
SPECTATOR CULTURE
The other evening, we made a design presentation in front of a municipal board for a new building. As usual, we brought in an architectural massing model. And we always work to give the...
AMAZING TRANSPARENCY
Art Qlate commented on Facebook about, to use their term, amazing transparency. They ask which brand of watercolors I use. First of all, thanks to Art for their very kind comments. The short answer...
SPECTATOR THEORY AND JOHN DEWEY
We are not spectators. We are dynamic beings. We move around. We engage with the world in three dimensions. Yet our culture conditions us to be spectators. Spectator theory insists that the world is...
CREATIVE DETAIL
We need to share details of our creative methods and processes. A couple of pages ago, I lamented that we don’t share any of the creative details of how we are inspired. For example,...
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