This book explores, debates and exhibits practices of contemporary architectural drawing, taking at its basis a series of meetings between a cohort of architects, critics and curators who discussed contemporary drawing practices and production in their own work and research. The participants - Laura Allen, Bryan Cantley, Nat Chard, Peter Cook, Mark Dorrian, Riet Eeckhout, Adrian Hawker, Perry Kulper, CJ Lim, Shaun Murray, Mark Smout, Neil Spiller, Natalija Subotincic, Michael Webb, Mark West and Michael Young - focused on drawings or drawing-related artefacts, around which dialogues took place. Beyond the usual representational imperatives of architecture drawing, the group considered and discussed its agency as a site of emergence and imagination. Organised in relation to specific topics and framed by contextual essays by Nat Chard, Mark Dorrian, Riet Eeckhout, Michael Young, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff and Carole Levesque, the book includes a selection of exquisite and fascinating key drawings by the various contributors, together with edited transcripts of discussions around drawing which developed at the symposia. The drawings presented in the book are in dialogue with one another, while their authors are themselves in extended conversation. This double aspect will make the book a distinctive publication and an enduringly important document and resource for thinking about architectural drawing.
Mark Dorrian is a Professor and Forbes Chair in Architecture at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, The University of Edinburgh, UK. Riet Eeckhout is an architect and a post-doctoral researcher at KU Leuven University, Belgium. Arnaud Hendrickx is an architect, an Associate Professor in Architecture at KU Leuven and an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Introduction. 'Dialogical Entanglement: Conversation as Close Encounter' by Riet Eeckhout. 'Talking Drawing' by Mark Dorrian. 1: Drawing as Material Practice: Michael Webb; Peter Cook; Neil Spiller; Smout Allen; 'Mediating Drawing Practice: Curatorial Reflections on Encounter and Dialogue' by Thomas-Bernard Kenniff and Carole Levesque. 2: Methods and Modes of Working: CJ Lim; Shaun Murray; Riet Eeckhout. 'Inquisitive Drawings' by Nat Chard. 3: The Agency of Drawing: Bryan Cantley; Perry Kulper; Natalija Subotincic. 'Spectral Mediums' by Michael Young. 4: The Limit Conditions of Drawing and Other Disciplinary Considerations: Michael Young; Mark West; Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker (Metis); Nat Chard.
