Drawing Space / Marking Sensation

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 aims to do so through freehand charcoal drawing. We’ll strive for wordless 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.

Various drawing experiments — no experience required! — cultivate different ways to see, feel, and represent spatial dynamics. Subjects include interior spaces, intervals between objects, air itself, the volumes in bodies and atoms; techniques such as blind contour, line-free tonal studies, and “sculpting with shadows” expand our habits of looking. Arrive willing to play messy, which means both getting your hands dirty with charcoal, and prioritizing process over product. Visits to specific sites and to study selected works at the Harvard University Art Museum enrich our visual vocabulary. Optional readings in fiction and philosophy contextualize the dimensions of visual perception. At midterm, students will begin developing a final drawing portfolio to investigate some aspect of spatial dynamics; this can build on a project from another course or relate to a personal curiosity.