If you had to guess when some of the most pioneering and groundbreaking architectural drawing techniques were developed, it’s unlikely your first choice would be the 17th century.

And yet, in a class at Woodbury University taught by Mark Ericson and Duane McLemore, the notion of exploring the history of architectural drawing by attempting to reproduce older drawings with contemporary computational tools has revealed that the past wasn’t nearly as primitive as some suppose. Entitled “Liminal Forms,” the work of this 5th year graduating class will be exhibited at the WUHO Gallery in Hollywood beginning July 8th. I spoke to both Mark and Duane not only to understand the origin of the class and the techniques it employed, but to get a preview of the works that will be on display.

How did you come up with this idea of exploring the history of architectural drawing? 

Mark: It was a seminar in the fall, basically a thesis prep studio. It’s the thesis seminar studio for the undergraduate sequence. In the fall they have a thesis prep seminar, and in the spring they have the studio. In the fall, the idea for the research was that basically we went through an exercise that dealt with my own research into historical drawing practices. Students spent four weeks doing what I do. We took a set of drawings of stereotomic drawings from the architect Guarino Guarini. 

The idea was to pick something that was fairly detached from even modernism, or our kind of contemporary tool set

I explained to the students how to do them orthographically let’s say, by historic means. Then we spent the second two weeks doing them with computational tools, so Grasshopper, and so forth. We did that for four weeks and it was kind of like a drawing class, and then the next eleven weeks of the semester was the development of their thesis, so I asked them to do the same thing, but to select a drawing. Some of them selected buildings, but most of them selected drawings, that were made pre-1900. They had to do the exact same process on that drawing. Through that analysis of the drawing they developed ideas about the role of flat orthographic 3D representation, and issues such as symmetry and axonometry.

Why did you make them pick a building or drawing pre-1900? 

Mark: The idea was to pick something that was fairly detached from even modernism, or our kind of contemporary tool set. How can we think about history and the historical practices of drawing, and how do they relate to the way we think about drawing now? Rather than seeing it as a kind of linear progression, it was about looking back at historical practices and saying do some of the things that we think are contemporary now, did they exist in the work of our predecessors?

What did the students discover in answer to that question? 

Mark: It was pretty interesting, because they were really aggressive. One of the things that was pretty compelling was that the students had to—I’m thinking in particular of the student Brandon Babin—he took a drawing from the 16th century and then he redrew it. The original drawing was the artist's understanding of how graphic architecture existed, which was something that happened before his time. 

Brandon developed a language of forms and of drawing that he would not have developed otherwise

So here’s a historic drawing looking at a historic technique. Brandon had to teach himself how to do this, and then he had to teach himself how to do that same thing through the use of Grasshopper. So by taking an older drawing, and then redrawing it through a set of computational tools, Brandon developed a language of forms and of drawing that he would not have developed otherwise.

There seems to be a lot of a discussion of the role of history, the new versus the old in architectural circles these days, and it’s fascinating to hear how you’re using history as a way to make better advances in contemporary practice. 

Duane: That’s something that bears focus in a sort of sophistication of where this all comes from within Mark’s project, and how the students are able to interface with it. Especially since the Enlightenment, there’s been this idea of the Arrow of Time moving in one direction. The idea of the dialectic is pushing things forward and refining them and making them better. So we’ve sort of lost the sense that there were certain techniques that lost out in the “marketplace of ideas,” if you wanted to use a really horrible term, they’re ideas that lost out in terms of how the story was told. Every once in a while, an architectural historian or art historian will go back and revisit them, and find they were a lot more sophisticated than the average practitioner or critic gives them credit for.

For example, at a discussion at the final review for one of Mark’s students, we were talking about the role of technology in the degree project class. We were talking about the role of technology in what they were doing versus what the practitioners and craftspersons were doing when they originally made these drawings. 

The stuff they were doing during the Baroque was actually more at the edge of the available technology for the time than anything we’re doing today

This is something that constantly comes up when you dig into history like this. The stuff they were doing during the Baroque was actually more at the edge of the available technology for the time than anything we’re doing today, than anything we sort of interface with as architects on a daily basis. These were people that were deeply avant garde 300 years before the concept was even one that was used. Revisiting some of the really advanced techniques that were on the edge of the available technology at the time is always timely, but especially with regard to drawing and representation, and the line between instrumentalization of the drawing and the aestheticization or figuration in the drawing. I think it’s that link to history that contests the idea that time is an arrow, that history is determinant and dialectical. To see students take it and make their own is super phenomenal and fascinating.

To be able to reference history and viscerally experience it in this way is presumably going to inspire some interesting design ideas. You’re not going to be recycling what’s current or in fashion; delving into the past can be an inspiration. 

Mark: I think it’s good for their imaginations.  

At the exhibition at the WUHO at July 8th, how many student works will you be exhibiting? 

Mark: We have fifteen students in the class, and we’re going to show all fifteen projects.  

Duane: They did amazing stuff. It can’t be expressed just how far outside of their comfort zones they were willing to work.  

Mark: They were an amazing group of students. To have a show where you show every single piece of work from the studio is exceptional.