Spacial Ideas, Architectural Imagery: The Role of Drawing Towards Invention

This intensive drawing course proposes to introduce the student of design to the theory and technique of spatial invention in drawing as it informs and inspires the design process of architecture. An understanding of pictorial structure, the compositional forces that give meaning and expressive force to the visual works of art, will be taught in meaningful dialogue with analytical drawing to aid the student to imagine substantial proposals for the invention of architecture. Visits to the Fogg Drawing collection to examine and study the works of Master Artists will assist our understanding of the ideas of spatial invention and composition in drawing.This course proposal is meant to address how the student comes to invent architecture in relation to its \”imagery,\” or what the building uses as an iconography (what the building \”looks\” like). No matter how elaborate the conceptual or organizational proposals for a design may be, until some notion of what the design looks like, or what its imagery will consist of, the design remains illusive, diagrammatic and abstract. Drawing, as this course would propose it, means to supply the unscripted means to contemplate the possible, and varied, images and iconographies available for architecture while simultaneously \”imagining\” its spatial and figural form. Drawing, in this regard, is considered the method by which we create the form of space, not merely to represent it.Our course will use the tools of graphite, paper, kneaded eraser, stump pencil and sandpaper in the construction of tonal drawings.