Dieses Kapitel untersucht die verschwommenen Grenzen zwischen Kunst, Zeichnung und Architektur und spricht sich für einen "undisziplinierten" Ansatz aus, der diese Bereiche als Teil eines miteinander verbundenen Systems betrachtet. Es führt das Konzept einer "Ökologie der Praxis" ein, einer dynamischen Ontologie, die die Umwelt, den Kontext und die Routinen berücksichtigt, die die architektonischen Methoden beeinflussen. Diese Perspektive fördert einen kontinuierlichen Lernprozess und kreativen Widerstand, der die Routineoperationen des Feldes herausfordert. Das Kapitel vertieft sich in die parallelen Praktiken des spekulativen Zeichnens und des Ausstellungsmachens und zeigt, wie sie die Entwicklung architektonischer Raumpläne und Bauwerke beeinflussen. Sie präsentiert Fallstudien des Architekturbüros Pac Studio aus Auckland, Aotearoa / Neuseeland, das mit spekulativem Zeichnen die Grenzen seiner Praxis-Ökologie problematisiert und erweitert. Das Kapitel diskutiert auch das "Nachleben" spekulativer Zeichnungen und argumentiert, dass ihr Potenzial nicht in der Ähnlichkeit mit der Realität liegt, sondern in der Bereicherung des Bauplanungsprozesses als Teil eines flexiblen, vernetzten Systems. Es unterstreicht die Bedeutung von "erweiterten Schleifen" im Design, bei denen vergangene formale und räumliche Designlösungen durchdacht, reflektiert und überprüft werden, was zu neuen Eigenschaften zwischen den Projekten führt. Das Kapitel schließt mit einem Plädoyer für einen undisziplinierten Ansatz des architektonischen Denkens, bei dem der Fortschritt vom Zeichnen zum Bauen nie linear verläuft und erinnerungswürdige Fragmente kreativer Arbeiten eine ständige Erkundung der Grenzen der Praxis ermöglichen.
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Abstract
This paper explores the boundaries between art, drawing, and architecture, viewing them as parts of an interconnected system rather than isolated disciplines. It examines how the authors’ practices in exhibition-making and speculative drawing reveal an undisciplined approach, described as a transdisciplinary method that problematises issues that professional architects encounter, broadening their ecology of practice. Here, drawings and buildings are part of a dynamic ontology that challenges linear progress from drawing to building and questions the static nature of both. The author’s full-scale inhabitable drawings are investigated as an example of undisciplining where drawings are in space, rather than of spaces. The paper examines an afterlife of speculative drawing through Encountering Drawing and how these drawings transition into Pac Studio’s professional architectural projects. The research demonstrates the significance of interpretive translation and the amplified design loop between drawings and buildings, showing that the journey from drawing to building is not linear. The conclusion posits that speculative drawings and undisciplined practices allow for the constant pushing of practice boundaries.
1 Introduction
This paper explores the boundaries between art, drawing, and architecture. While viewing these boundaries as edges or limits might be tempting, understanding architectural thinking as systemic implies that these boundaries are part of an interconnected system. The research positions the authors’ [1] exhibition-making and speculative drawing practices as acts that extend boundaries beyond their immediate impact, influencing built architecture in unforeseen ways. This perspective views the design process as part of an ecology in which understanding the implications of boundaries can result in curious and immersive designs. This research asks how the parallel practices of speculative drawing and exhibition-making influence the development of architectural spatial propositions and built work.
2 Undisciplined: A Method to Disrupt Your Practice
An architect’s ambition to be transdisciplinary and explore beyond the immediate necessity of constructing a project can be termed undisciplined [2]. To be undisciplined, one must first understand the architectural discipline’s fundamental principles and then explore methods that extend beyond or run parallel to traditional practices. This line of thought builds on Alessandro Zambelli’s argument that transdisciplinary drawings, sitting between the thresholds of disciplines, can be described as “undisciplined” [3]. Sylvia Lavin argues, “Every one of these moments of ‘besidedness’ disrupts not only the routine operations of the field but the routinisation of life as such, toward which so much of architecture’s standard professional practice contributes.” [4].
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2.1 Ecology of Practice: A Dynamic Ontology for Extending Boundaries
Hélène Frichot critiques the flat ontology of viewing drawings and buildings as only objects and material effects. As an alternative, Frichot proposes an “ecology of practice” as a continuous learning process and an act of creative resistance [5]. To consider architectural practice as part of an interconnected system that examines boundaries requires a dynamic ontology. This approach, inspired by philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers, engages systemic thinking and “creative problematisation” of one’s “habitat” [6]. In this context, “ecology” denotes the environment, context, and routines that influence one’s methods. Problematisation in research and architecture ensures studies are relevant, challenging established theories to contribute practical knowledge. Practising within the architectural field requires redefining its boundaries. It is liberating for practising architects, whose work intersects art, speculative drawing, and architecture, to view their work as an interconnected process within a habitat rather than discrete objects. This fluid process, inherent in practice, aligns with the reality of architects who must create numerous models and drawings to explore options, stimulating the architect’s tactile imagination, challenging preconceived ideas, and fostering new possibilities. Even when completed, buildings never remain static. Once built, they age, are transformed by users, and are modified by events. Over time, they may be renovated, altered, or transformed beyond recognition. Based on an understanding of the “ecology of practice,” the role of an architect is to articulate the problems you choose, determine your mode of practice, and the habitat in which you undertake your work [7].
2.2 Creative Problematisation and Professional Practice
Through speculative drawing, writing, teaching, and exhibitions, the authors’ architecture practice Pac Studio, based in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, problematises issues that professional architects encounter. An example of undisciplined practice at Pac Studio, which views drawing as central to its work, is challenging the traditional linear progression from drawing to building, questioning the static nature of drawings and buildings. Architecture is explored as a consequence of its media, framed against the background of the rapidly changing way architects draw and visualise their designs. This examination extends to the influence of simulation software on architects’ drawing methods, particularly how computational design shifts the focus towards rendering and predictive control, thereby sidelining “the human body as the common basis of design and experience” [8]. To diverge from drawing methods typically seen as documents for future buildings, architects can envision an undisciplined practice that operates parallel to professional standards. Pac Studio employs speculative drawing to problematise and expand the boundaries of its practice ecology.
2.3 Parallel Practice: Speculative Drawing and Exhibitions of Pac Studio
Over five years, Pac Studio made several collaborative creative works, including Penumbral Reflections [9] (see Fig. 1), Drawing the Room: Drawing Within the Room [10], Drawing Room [11] (see Fig. 2), and Encountering Drawing [12] (see Fig. 3). These installations include spatial studies of light and shadow, projections, virtual reality, motion-capture technology, spatial events, sound, performance, and screen-printing. These interdisciplinary research projects investigate full-scale architectural drawing in an expanded sense. Emmons writes that when “no clear relation exists between body and drawing, this inhabitation is at best partial and shifting” [13]. These projects demonstrate the making of architectural drawings and their encountering as engaging the entire body: in encountering these, we occupy and inhabit the spaces of these drawings. The disciplines’ current fixations on simulation – such as photorealistic collages, Building Information Modelling, virtual and augmented reality – require reconciliation with practices that mediate through the idiosyncrasies of translation as the hinge between idea and built form. The themes explored include full-scale drawing, inhabitable drawing, architectural optical devices, and time and architecture. Alternative architectural drawing practices are investigated here: these are drawings in space, rather than of spaces.
The question remains: Once the undisciplining and problematising are complete, how can we bring back new ideas to the Studio to assist in building formal and experiential design?
Fig. 1.
Penumbral Reflections, Objectspace Auckland, NZ (2018). Photography: David St George. A series of simulations is projected around a latticed grid supporting a giant Claude glass.
Fig. 2.
Drawing Room: Drawing Machine, Toi Moroki Centre of Contemporary Art Christchurch, New Zealand (2020–2021); bead blasted aluminium frame, rubber tyres, electric motor and gearbox; 2.5-min cycle. Photography: Simon Devitt.
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3 The Afterlife of Speculative Drawings
For Pac Studio, the primary goal of speculation is not just to challenge disciplinary boundaries for their own sake but also to introduce novel design loops and formal tropes that will ultimately be incorporated into professional practice. We call this an afterlife of speculative drawing. Inhabitable, full-scale and embodied drawings have numerous spatial attributes of a building; however, they are not subject to stringent building and planning regulations, unreasonable client demands, and shrinking budgets. Given this, establishing a deliberate visual link between speculative drawings and building construction poses challenges, and losing a drawing’s vitality is easy, creating a resemblance problem.
3.1 Resemblance Problem
Resemblance is not a problem for architects now; simulation software has become the design process for architects, marking a shift towards cinematic imagery, predictive control, and immersive design experiences. The visual gap between ideas and architecture is narrowed. Traditionally, speculative drawings functioned as a translation tool from drawing to building, going beyond simply instructing a builder. Peter Eisenman’s House VI [14] is a frequently discussed example of how drawings translate into a building. With contemporary eyes, what is interesting about the relationship between the house and drawings is how the house tries to capture a drawing process in a freeze-frame. However, there is a discrepancy when drawings meet inhabitation. The most appealing aspect of the house is the undrawn features: beds divided by a beam of light, lounge futons, geometric chairs and sparsely furnished rooms with vivid pastel hues enriched with sumptuous browns and taupe. The lesson here is that pursuing a universal formal system or design language is cumbersome and overly complex. In contrast, the rub between drawing and reality is fascinating as a counter to the seamless renders of today, which allows for playful built oddities and holds potential for new geometric ideas. We contend that a drawing’s potential lies not in being a stand-in for reality, and its resemblance is less important than the overall ecology of a practice. For speculative drawings to enrich the building design process, viewing them as part of a flexible, interconnected system that embraces false starts, rough boundaries, and indeterminacy is beneficial.
3.2 Encountering Drawings
Encountering Drawing (see Fig. 3) explores the process of translating speculative drawing studies and exhibitions (named Shadow-past) into professional architectural work in the form of architectural inner skins, apertures and surface studies for built forms (named Future-built). The work explored in these inhabitable drawings, created by light and shadow, proposes inhabitable architectures, particularly roof forms and apertures. Four houses across Aotearoa/New Zealand, in design development at Pac Studio in 2022, continue to explore this integration of changing light conditions: Second Avenue and Rangitahi Houses both incorporate upper-level windows which filter light and direct views; Sherwood Avenue House expresses the roof at the point of the window; and Greers Road House allows for shafts of light through to the interior. Four maquette models of 1:10 fragments of these houses are modelled and included in Encountering Drawing. These corners allow viewing apertures onto the “site” of past work – in the form of projections and screen-printed drawings [15].
Fig. 3.
Encountering Drawing, (2022). Exhibition detail. Photography: Sam Hartnett. Folded aluminium maquette models on screenprints based on shadow patterns with digital projections.
3.3 Interpretive Translation and Remembered Fragments
Architectural drawings are acknowledged as instruments of “interpretive translation” [16] – that is, they can produce another drawing, model, or building element – understood to occupy a different site. We investigate this translation as generating an afterlife of these speculative drawing practices – within the work of Pac Studio and teaching practices – so that the work becomes intertextual in that it refers to remembered fragments of creative works and drawings that sit beside this work yet feed into it. We use the analogy of cooking stock: these speculative, exhibited projects hold thinking and experience and provide crucial essences which can then be distributed, in smaller amounts, throughout future built projects. The connections between these methods and building might be murky, but they are crucial to our practice’s ecology. Here, the importance lies more in the myriad of ideas that can find a place to land rather than in direct resemblance to their inspiration.
Fig. 4.
Revit drawings of the houses that inspired the forms of Encountering Drawing, now in the detailed design phase. (Drawn by the authors, 2024)
3.4 Amplified Loops
The design framework for Pac Studio focuses on identifying and amplifying emergent loops in our designs. Loops involve the process of ruminating, reflecting, and revisiting past formal and spatial design solutions. An example of a loop emerged while developing Encountering Drawing. At that time, we were creating a series of houses with complex roof and skylight forms. Some were angular, integrated into uneven triangular roof shapes, and curved or diagonal views through rooms and split levels. The exhibition’s timing allowed us to assemble the houses, observing emerging patterns and subtly differentiating each.
Our projects’ timelines frequently intersect; we design houses, exhibitions, and speculative drawings simultaneously. The progression from drawing to building is never linear. As time passed, the four houses used as inspiration in Encountering Drawing moved past the concept to a detailed design (see Fig. 4). One died on the drawing board. Despite their stylistic differences, detailing unifies the projects, allowing for unexpected cross-pollination. The projects, linked by Encountering Drawing, reflect ideas from our exhibitions and writing, allowing for emergent properties between projects rather than a collection of static complete buildings and drawings. While the projects share traits and reflect speculative design details, the design processes leading to these outcomes are more significant to our ecology than superficial resemblances. The projects embody Richard Blythe’s “fascinations” [17], indicating the broader referential framework of the practice community where the designer is situated and key tropes to which the practice recurrently returns. For Pac Studio, consistent fascinations include drawings with volume, light and shadow that create optical movement and the use of supergraphic geometry. Each project fascination can be elaborated on, but more beneficial for practising architects is the shorthand communication among in-house designers. As collaborative designers, we use made-up terms like supergraphic geometry. Our clients or other architects do not need to understand these terms, yet they benefit us. In this respect, architecture is not a collection of finished buildings but a process that holds meaning in your ecology.
3.5 Buildings as Drawings
Buildings can influence the form and ideas of speculative drawings or exhibitions. For instance, as we were developing Encountering Drawing, designs from previous years were completed. One house, Crinkle Cut (see Fig. 5), was built around the spectacle of light and shadow and reveals how architecture can draw with light and shadow: these may occur within buildings, on their outside surfaces, and surrounding ground. The house has raked clerestory windows and louvred facades that frame dynamic views of surrounding pōhutukawa trees. These windows introduce a temporal dimension, allowing occupants to observe the sun and moon’s movements and the shifting light across the home’s crafted structural elements. Crinkle Cut brought to the forefront of our collective mind the importance of how you encounter architecture and how mentally inhabiting a drawing mirrors this experience. The plan encourages your body to twist and turn, guiding your gaze through rooms to a garden. Another House, Waimataruru (see Fig. 5), revealed how darkness enhances the perception of subtle light changes throughout the day. Maarten Van Den Driessche suggests that a building is not just a physical structure but also a representation of a design idea [18]. It is like the final drawing in a series of design iterations, one that can then generate new drawings, buildings and ideas. The building embodies one possible solution the designer could have chosen.
Fig. 5.
Pac Studio, Crinkle Cut (2022); Waimataruru (2022). Photography: Sam Hartnett.
4 Conclusion
The research highlights the advantages of integrating speculative drawing and exhibition-making into professional practice, leading to considered designs. When anchored in a practice ecology, the architect’s role involves identifying specific problems and choosing a practice mode to examine your architectural habitat. It portrays architectural thinking as an interrelated process that pushes limits. The research advocates for an undisciplined approach where the progression from drawing to building is never linear, where remembered fragments of creative works both built and drawn enable amplified loops to explore the boundaries of practice perpetually.
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