scholarly journals Drawing in Perspective: A Proposition for a Discursive Architecture in the Age of Digital Representation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Laura Coates

<p>Contemporary architectural practise has come to depend upon digital representation as a means of design and for the production of architectural drawings. The computer is common place in architectural offices, relegating the drawing board as a machine of the past. Today, the architect is more likely to draw with a mouse than a mechanical pencil. The proposition of this research suggests such a dramatic shift within representational technology will not only affect how architects design, but also, what they design. Digital modes of architectural representation are reliant on mathematical code designed to artificially simulate visual experience. Such software offers strict alliance with a geometrically correct perspective code making the construction of perspective as simple as taking a ‘snap shot’. The compliance of the digital drawing to codes prescribed by a programmer distance the architect from the perspectival representation, consequently removing the architect’s control of the drawing convention. The universality of perspectival views is enforced by computer programmes such as Google Sketch-Up, which use perspective as a default view. This research explores the bias of linear perspective, revealing that which architects have forgotten due to a dependence on digital software. Special attention is drawn to the lack of control the architect exerts over their limits of representation. By using manual drawing the perspective convention is able to be unpacked and critiqued against the limitations of the system first prescribed by Brunelleschi. The manual drawing is positioned as a powerful mode of representation for it overtly expresses projection and the architect’s control of the line. The hand drawing allows the convention to be interpreted erroneously. The research is methodology driven, focusing on representation as more than a rudimentary tool, but a component of the design process. Thus, representational tools are used to provide a new spatial representation of a site. Computer aided design entered wide spread architectural practice at the end of the 1980’s, a decade that provided an ideal setting for speculative drawn projects. Such projects proved fruitful to architects critically approaching issues of representation and drawing convention, treating the drawing as more than utilitarian in the production of architecture. Whilst the move into digital imagining is not a paradigm shift for the act of drawing, it fundamentally shifted the way architects draw, separating drawing conventions onto visually separate ‘sheets’. The architectural drawing known today was that discovered in the Renaissance, Renaissance architects, the first to conceive of architecture through representation, thus was their endeavour to produce a true three dimensional image. The Renaissance architect executed absolute control of perspective, control, which has since defined the modern architect. Positioned within research by design, the ‘drawing-out’ process is a critical interpretation of perspective. In particular the drawing of instrumental perspective is unpacked within the realm of scientific research. The picture plane, horizon line and ground plane remain constant as the positions of these are well documented. The stationary point, vanishing point (possibly the most speculative components of the drawing) or the relationship between the two, behave as independent variables. In breaking the assumptions that underlie linear perspective as a fixed geometric system we may ask ourselves if we are in control of representational methods, or if they control us. Since architects are controlled by their means of representation this question is paramount to the discipline, particularly today, when digital drawing has shifted the relationship between architect and representation. The implications of this new relationship may result in monotony across the architectural disciple, where the production of critical architecture is secondary to computer technology.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Laura Coates

<p>Contemporary architectural practise has come to depend upon digital representation as a means of design and for the production of architectural drawings. The computer is common place in architectural offices, relegating the drawing board as a machine of the past. Today, the architect is more likely to draw with a mouse than a mechanical pencil. The proposition of this research suggests such a dramatic shift within representational technology will not only affect how architects design, but also, what they design. Digital modes of architectural representation are reliant on mathematical code designed to artificially simulate visual experience. Such software offers strict alliance with a geometrically correct perspective code making the construction of perspective as simple as taking a ‘snap shot’. The compliance of the digital drawing to codes prescribed by a programmer distance the architect from the perspectival representation, consequently removing the architect’s control of the drawing convention. The universality of perspectival views is enforced by computer programmes such as Google Sketch-Up, which use perspective as a default view. This research explores the bias of linear perspective, revealing that which architects have forgotten due to a dependence on digital software. Special attention is drawn to the lack of control the architect exerts over their limits of representation. By using manual drawing the perspective convention is able to be unpacked and critiqued against the limitations of the system first prescribed by Brunelleschi. The manual drawing is positioned as a powerful mode of representation for it overtly expresses projection and the architect’s control of the line. The hand drawing allows the convention to be interpreted erroneously. The research is methodology driven, focusing on representation as more than a rudimentary tool, but a component of the design process. Thus, representational tools are used to provide a new spatial representation of a site. Computer aided design entered wide spread architectural practice at the end of the 1980’s, a decade that provided an ideal setting for speculative drawn projects. Such projects proved fruitful to architects critically approaching issues of representation and drawing convention, treating the drawing as more than utilitarian in the production of architecture. Whilst the move into digital imagining is not a paradigm shift for the act of drawing, it fundamentally shifted the way architects draw, separating drawing conventions onto visually separate ‘sheets’. The architectural drawing known today was that discovered in the Renaissance, Renaissance architects, the first to conceive of architecture through representation, thus was their endeavour to produce a true three dimensional image. The Renaissance architect executed absolute control of perspective, control, which has since defined the modern architect. Positioned within research by design, the ‘drawing-out’ process is a critical interpretation of perspective. In particular the drawing of instrumental perspective is unpacked within the realm of scientific research. The picture plane, horizon line and ground plane remain constant as the positions of these are well documented. The stationary point, vanishing point (possibly the most speculative components of the drawing) or the relationship between the two, behave as independent variables. In breaking the assumptions that underlie linear perspective as a fixed geometric system we may ask ourselves if we are in control of representational methods, or if they control us. Since architects are controlled by their means of representation this question is paramount to the discipline, particularly today, when digital drawing has shifted the relationship between architect and representation. The implications of this new relationship may result in monotony across the architectural disciple, where the production of critical architecture is secondary to computer technology.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
James Craig

Some argue that the tendency to ignore the self as an aspect of the relationship between architects and their drawings is a consequence of the hegemony of digital modes of representation, others that it is inherent to traditional perspectival and projective techniques. It is in this repressive context that architects struggle to consider their subjectivity in relation to the drawings they produce. This article aims to divert this subjective distance by proposing a method for revealing the unconscious forces that abide between architects and architectural drawings. Through a comparative analysis of this intermediate space with the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s theory of the Transitional Object, the author considers his own relationship to perspective drawing and materializes this through the production of a drawing apparatus titled: the autobiographical hinge. Bilaterally, the conception of this drawing apparatus is founded on examples of visual art practice that challenge the repressive qualities of linear perspective, this includes the work of Penelope Haralambidou (2003); Lawrence Gowing (1965) and Marion Milner (1950). In a time of dissolved agency for the architect, this article presents a method through which to mine one’s own relationship to architectural drawing, through which a disturbance to those codified regimes occurs as a consequence of one’s own subjectivity being recognized.


Heritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1211-1232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterini T. Delegou ◽  
Georgia Mourgi ◽  
Elisavet Tsilimantou ◽  
Charalabos Ioannidis ◽  
Antonia Moropoulou

In this work, a multi-disciplinary approach regarding diagnostic study processes is presented, using as an example the Catholicon of Kaisariani Monastery in Attica, Greece. Kaisariani Monastery is considered one of the most important Byzantine architectural complexes in Greece. The Catholicon of Kaisariani Monastery was built during the middle Byzantine period, and has undergone many reconstructions during the centuries. It is a semi-complex, four-columned, cross-in-square church, with a cloisonné masonry. The suggested diagnostic processes included the creation of multidisciplinary thematic maps in Computer Aided Design (CAD) environment, which incorporated: (a) data of historical and architectural documentation; (b) data of geometric documentation; and (c) data of building materials characterization and decay diagnosis. The historical and general architectural data were acquired by thorough bibliographical/archival research. Geometric documentation data were acquired by three-dimensional (3D) laser scanner for the creation of the Catholicon section drawings, whereas image based photogrammetric techniques were utilized for the creation of a 3D textured model, from which orthoimages and architectural drawings of the Catholicon façades were developed. In parallel, characterization of building materials and identification of decay patterns took place after the onsite application of the nondestructive techniques of digital microscopy, infrared thermography and ground penetrating radar. These vast array kinds of data were elaborated and integrated into the architectural drawings, developing thematic maps that record and represent the current preservation state of the monument, a concerning major construction phases, the most important conservation intervention projects, building materials and decay. Furthermore, data quantification regarding the extent of building materials and decay at each monument’s façade took place. Therefore, correlation and better understanding of the environmental impact on building materials according to façade orientation and historical data, e.g., construction phases, was accomplished. In conclusion, the presented processes are multidisciplinary tasks that require collaboration among architects, surveyor engineers and materials scientists/engineers. They are also prerequisites for the planning and application of compatible and efficient conservation/restoration interventions, for the ultimate goal of the sustainable protection of a monument.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Crucq

Linear perspective has long been used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on the picture plane. One of its central axioms comes from Euclidean geometry and holds that all parallel lines converge in a single vanishing point. Although linear perspective provided the painter with a means to organize the painting, the question is whether the gaze of the beholder is also affected by the underlying structure of linear perspective: for instance, in such a way that the orthogonals leading to the vanishing point also automatically guides the beholder’s gaze. This was researched during a pilot study by means of an eye-tracking experiment at the Lab for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA) of the University of Vienna. It appears that in some compositions the vanishing point attracts the view of the participant. This effect is more significant when the vanishing point coincides with the central vertical axis of the painting, but is even stronger when the vanishing point also coincides with a major visual feature such as an object or figure. The latter calls into question what exactly attracts the gaze of the viewer, i.e., what comes first: the geometrical construct of the vanishing point or the visual feature?


2010 ◽  
Vol 113-116 ◽  
pp. 1619-1623
Author(s):  
Peng Li ◽  
Yu Bo Tao ◽  
Feng Hu Wang ◽  
Sun Guo Wang

For further researching the structural characteristics of Orientated strand board (OSB) mat, a three-dimensional model was developed using computer-aided design (CAD) technology to simulate behaviors of individual strands in the mat-forming process. This model provided a more realistic description of the mat structure than the previous simulations in using varied strand geometry and different types of strand orientation, defining strand location, and solving the problem of edge effect. This model can be used to analyze the impact of strand orientation on the number of strand overlaps, and to identify the relationship of strand orientation and the horizontal voids distribution in the mat. Information provided by this model is the basis of further studying the effect of the mat formation on panel void characteristics, and the relationship of the voids volume to panel properties.


Author(s):  
Nan-Ching Tai ◽  

The advances in computer-aided design tools have enabled design visualization and realization to become more efficient and effective. However, these fast-growing digital technologies are also gradually reducing the presence of hand drawings in architectural education. This leads to a reduction in the ability to be inspired from the direct observation of the architectural environment through on-site freehand sketching. This study aims to implement digital technology as a teaching aid to retrieve these lost abilities. Analytical drawing is a method that encourages thinking before drawing, laying out the invisible underlying structure, and finalizing it with a visible appearance. This method remains an effective way of three-dimensional visual thinking. Accordingly, this study presents an interactive smartphone application that brings computer-assisted instructions into mobile learning. Promising responses from students revealed that using digital technology as a teaching aid can help to retrieve the lost abilities of visual thinking through on-site sketching.


Perception ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan B Deręgowski ◽  
Peter McGeorge

Two experiments are reported in which the relationship between the orientation of the typical contour of a lamella in relation to the observer, and the ability of the observer to learn the correct position and orientation of sets of lamellae in three-dimensional arrays, was examined. For lamellae presented with their typical contour in a plane other than the observer's frontoparallel plane, the results of both experiments indicated that participants encoded lamellae in such a way that their typical contour appeared to be closer to the observer's frontoparallel plane than the respective stimulus. The relationship of the present findings to previous results on children's drawings and to the concept of the picture plane are considered.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 50405-1-50405-5
Author(s):  
Young-Woo Park ◽  
Myounggyu Noh

Abstract Recently, the three-dimensional (3D) printing technique has attracted much attention for creating objects of arbitrary shape and manufacturing. For the first time, in this work, we present the fabrication of an inkjet printed low-cost 3D temperature sensor on a 3D-shaped thermoplastic substrate suitable for packaging, flexible electronics, and other printed applications. The design, fabrication, and testing of a 3D printed temperature sensor are presented. The sensor pattern is designed using a computer-aided design program and fabricated by drop-on-demand inkjet printing using a magnetostrictive inkjet printhead at room temperature. The sensor pattern is printed using commercially available conductive silver nanoparticle ink. A moving speed of 90 mm/min is chosen to print the sensor pattern. The inkjet printed temperature sensor is demonstrated, and it is characterized by good electrical properties, exhibiting good sensitivity and linearity. The results indicate that 3D inkjet printing technology may have great potential for applications in sensor fabrication.


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