Designers often draw space digitally, and virtual reality creates vivid illusions of spatial experience. In an age of AI, how can we reconnect with the direct, here-and-now, bodily sensations that structure and inform these digital “spaces”? This course uses freehand charcoal drawing to activate wordless, multisensory experiences of space. Architectural historian and theorist Zeynep Çelik Alexander calls this “kinaesthetic knowing” and notes that it has long been an undercurrent in design education and practice. Visually articulating such spatial sensations can enrich any mode of creativity.

Diverse drawing experiments — no experience required! — explore unique potentialities of mark, tone, and line, and thereby open up different ways to see, feel, and represent spatial dynamics. Spatially-oriented twists on traditional techniques (such as blind contour and line-free tonal studies) expand our habits of looking, and can enrich visual representations of space. Subjects include architectural forms, intervals between objects, air itself, volumes within bodies and atoms; nude models who help us remember how humans occupy interior spaces. Arrive willing to play messy, which means both getting your hands dirty with charcoal, and prioritizing process (and perception) over product. Visits to specific sites and to study selected works at the Harvard University Art Museum and the Loeb Library Special Collections Archive enrich our visual vocabulary. Optional readings in fiction and philosophy contextualize dimensions of visual perception. Over the semester, each student will develop a final drawing project that will investigate some aspect of spatial dynamics, and/or of drawing spatially; this can build on a project from another course or relate to a personal curiosity.

Note regarding the Fall 2026 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Wednesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Wednesday, September 2nd.