Question d’architecture: édifices
Practices of Drawing
If architecture is a cultural production, the architectural act is part of the history of its discipline and tools. This disciplinary position is at the heart of the specific pedagogical teaching practices at the architectural studio and the program in History & Theory at UCLouvain Loci Brussels:
– (de) composing and (re) composing remarkable architectural references identified in the contexts under study reveals architectural logics;
– (re) contextualizing historically and geographically the element studied and the composition of which it is part makes it possible to grasp its cultural specificity;
– constructing a repository for cultural production, in the field of architectural theory and criticism, makes it possible to situate the architectural act in a form both of typological continuity and of contemporary urgency.
More specifically, it is a question of interrogating each element according to three graphical tools, leading to a form of understanding of the building:
– geometrical projection produces a complete flattening of the studied object. It gives a pure objective understanding of the composition.
– axonometric projection produces a distance from the manipulated object. This particular point of view illustrates the materiality of the object in a deliberately partial way. The point of view it poses on the object is clearly interrogative about the composition and reveals its contemporaneity.
– collage produces an intimate relationship with the object. It extracts a singular quality which is raised to the rank of principle. It opens up a critical, even prospective understanding of the issues at stake. Each of these tools is part of a history of graphic narrative that is an integral part of the disciplinary specificity. This disciplinary statement produces a catalogue of strictly architectural qualities identified in the selected buildings. This production of knowledge can be mobilized in the act of composing architecture, operating in its contemporary condition.
Cécile Chanvillard & Christine Fontaine