GUINET FARMHOUSE
Three views of an ordinary building. I was leafing thru Form Function and Design by Jacques Grillo. On page 108, he includes three views of an ordinary building. And two of the three views...
Tagged: TRANSPARENT DRAWING
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...
ORDINARY GRAIN FACILITY
We are away for a few days, so I thought a travel related post of an ordinary grain facility would be fun. While driving thru the hinterlands of Washington State some months ago, a...
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....
HEY BRUNELLESCHI!
Has the eye become a fixed, monocular construct? Is the eye truly locked into the Renaissance perspective dimensional grids? Of course not. We move our bodies thru our world on a daily basis. If...
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...
WHERE PAPER COMES FROM
Paper. We worship it. It is what we draw on. How is it made? About 95% of the paper that we draw on comes from trees. At the heart of it, the papermaking process...
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...
CORB IN THE M’ZAB VALLEY
In the 23 May 2016 issue of The New Yorker, Julie Belcove writes about a new architectural exhibition that is being constructed in the Guggenheim. The artist is Kader Attia, and he has set...
PLATO ON PERSPECTIVE
In The Republic, it is nice to hear that Plato was skeptical of the linear perspective. Writing in 380 BC, he states in Book X: “Thus (through perspective) every sort of confusion is revealed...
KNOWLEDGE DRAWING
Drawings used to be vessels of knowledge. Yet the trajectory of vision has led to detachment. Instead of a body centered experience, the distancing, as we have seen, promotes the nihilistic attitude that pervades...
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...
OSMOTIC DRAWING
Our critique of the one point perspective, it turns out, has had many supporting voices over the centuries. One result is osmotic drawing. Maurice Merlaeau-Ponty was intensely critical of the ‘Cartesian perspectivalist scopic regime’. ...
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,...
ALL ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Reading in Bachelard, it was gratifying to hear him contemplate memory, space and time. He posits the theory that memory is free of time. That is to say, our memories are devoid of a...
WHAT IS AND WHAT WILL BE
In Transparent Drawing, you draw to solve what is to be built, and you draw to solve what has already been built. Either way it is the same problem that requires a solution. That...
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