“Images throughout history have become a means of representing space, distorting truths and shaping realities. The tools by which we construct buildings, spaces and drawings have the power to shape the meaning of the world around us. We have adopted tools and representations that often fail to express the multiplicity of perspectives and histories of space fully. Our perception of space varies in numerous ways through different cultural, social and political factors.”

-  Sennet: 1991.

 

This research project will explore prototypes for representing the relationship between drawn space and physical space. The prototypes will take the form of drawing and visualizing tools, using as prompts the Camera Lucida, pantograph, and perspectograph which are used for recording and describing space in different ways. Following the research into the development of these tools, a series of iterations will be made which adapt their initial intended uses to experiment with methods of architectural representation. The intention is that the process of altering representational methodologies with these prototypes can expose how different agendas of colonial and ruling powers might be communicated and are embedded in visual and material depictions of space, while also revealing the marginalized multiplicities that are present.

 

The representational prototypes will be employed at a site of historical importance in Egypt, such as the Alexandria Naval Unknown Soldier Memorial owing to its construction initially to commemorate deaths at sea during the Battle of Navarino (1827) and later repurposed to commemorate those who died in the 1952 Egyptian Revolution. This site, as an initial example, offers potential in exploring multiple political narratives which might have played out in the communication and documentation of the architecture itself over time. Through the process of drawing and altering representations using these prototypical drawing or visualising tools, the research will attempt to combine multiple versions of drawings to explore the potential that representational methods may carry in subverting power constructed by the various regimes in Egypt. By utilising these prototypes and tactics, the research argues that the multiplicity of narratives omitted can reveal aspects at times forgotten and ignored in the drawn records of these monuments. The outcome will therefore be a series of drawing-machine prototypes which are tested out with sites in Egypt, to produce drawings of monuments whose meaning changed over time with political regimes. 

 

Central Research Question:

 

The research raises the following key questions:

 

Are the methods of production of architectural drawings capable of subverting meanings associated with dominant colonial forms of power in space, and instead combining a multiplicity of views into drawing, including marginalised viewpoints?

 

In using particular representational prototypes and tactics to deconstruct and redraw existing or lost buildings and spaces, can this creative process affect how we understand the power embedded in the symbolism of space, as well as the position of those who contest this relationship of power?

 

More generally, what elements are foregrounded or backgrounded through particular approaches, and where is manipulation possible through drawing, at the service of a specific political agenda?

 

Related Literature & Theoretical Framework:

 

The theoretical framework draws on architectural history and theory, along with visual studies and philosophy to argue for the relevance of drawing and drawing tools or prototypes as central to architectural production.

 

In the book Translations from Drawing to Buildings and Other Essays, Robin Evans (1997) points out that architecture manifests into existence through drawing and that the building never comes before the drawing. While other viewpoints exist, this statement guides this research proposal in its argument that how we draw and measure space has a direct impact on the subject matter (buildings and spaces) that are built.

 

For Evans, “The particular disadvantage under which architects labour, is that they are never working directly with the object of their thought. They are always working at it through some intervening medium, almost always the drawing” (Evans: 1997). Evans explains here that there is a disjuncture in the relationship between drawing and subject matter, and argues the medium of representation is the direct tool of an architect- this, in turn, has an impact on what is built and how (Evans: 1997). This research project is interested in this intervening medium through an interrogation of both drawing and the implements used to make drawings. It is, therefore, located in the space between tools, drawing, and the physical building.

 

In a different vein, Jean François Niceron states that perspective can express solid shapes which can trick the eye, deceiving judgement and reason, through bringing out the depth of appearance on a flat surface (Allen and Pearson 2016). While historically, architects have used orthographic projections to represent space, the research project is interested in developing a series of prototypical design tools in order to create a multiplicity of representational forms.  John Berger mentions that through the use of new languages of images and drawing, we could confer new kinds of power and better define our experiences, not only our personal experiences but also the essential historical experiences of our relations to the past and its meaning (Berger: 1972). Therefore, it may be argued that working with representational forms may allow us to become active agents in the histories we seek to understand. Therefore, it may be argued that through development of this prototypes and drawings we may discover a means of revealing alternative marginalized histories.

 

Theoretically, the research builds on concepts of creolization in the writings of Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation (1997) and rhizome from “A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze, Guattari & Massumi: 1987). The tactics of these mentioned concepts applied to the prototypes and drawings can allow for a means of challenging existing and dominant narratives found in drawings. For Glissant, creolization is defined as the process of assimilation in cultures to form a new distinct culture that is hybrid and multiple, rejecting the idea of purity (Glissant 2009). Glissant, in turn, builds on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘rhizome’ structure, which acquires its definition from a root-like subterranean stem, commonly horizontal in position developing into a decentralized structure (Deleuze, Guattari & Massumi 1987). Rhizome becomes a contrasting principle to arborescent, or tree-like systems which grow vertically into a centralized structure (Deleuze, Guattari & Massumi 1987). A Rhizome, therefore, has no central structure nor a clear point of origin. These theoretical concepts are useful in this thesis, as the exploration in prototypes is focused on a process of making drawings that offer multiple, creolized and subversive drawings which question relations of dominance.

 

Research Methods:

 

The methodology draws on practical methods of model-making, film and drawing to explore three different prototypes of spatial construction, namely the camera lucida, pantograph and perspectograph. The initial phase of the research involves historical research into these western technologies of representation – drawing on the writings of Robin Evans, along with Luke Pearson and Laura Allen as mentioned above who look into 16th – 18th Century European architectural archives. This historical research will inform the initial development of the prototypes.

 

These representational prototypes will then be employed in their direct, and altered or adjusted states to test resultant meaning or narrative which may be achievable through multiple drawing types. Similarly, the methodology will adopt and explore methods of drawing and projection of anamorphosis, inverted perspective and impossible perspective drawing techniques (Allen and Pearson 2016).

 

These drawings will use the tactics of the previously-mentioned rhizome to subvert hierarchical structures found within drawings to support the research topic and unpack the investigative approached outlaid in the research questions. As such, the intention is to explore how a reworking of the drawing-machine, can be used to both reveal relationships of power and marginal viewpoints simultaneously. This will be tested out with a series of monuments, starting with the Alexandria Naval Unknown Soldier Memorial, as a means to contest the official colonial narrative, and instead reveal alternative marginalised spatial histories.

 

Key References:

 

• Allen, L. Pearson, L., Sheil, B. & Migayrou, F., 2016. 1st ed. Cambridge, Ontario: Riverside Architectural Press.

• Berger, J. 1990. . 1st ed. London: Penguin Books.

• Deleuze, G. Guattari, F. & Massumi, B., 1987. . 2nd ed. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

• Evans, R. 1997. . 1st ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

• Glissant, É. 1997. . 1st ed. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

• Gordon, A. 2008. . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

• Gordon, J. 1992. . 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Sennett, R. 1992. . 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

• Verhoeff, N., 2012. Mobile Screens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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