232 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
practical component of the project leads to the frequent incomprehension of their
meaning, and overall, to a lack of “to know how to do”, misrepresentation and
the weakening of a student’s critical capacity, as he incorrectly may accepts these
solutions as given.- Due to its complex nature, the architectural drawing constitutes a repertory of
signs and symbols, whose reading and comprehension relies on mental rigour
and the quality of its graphic expression, where each line and each stroke should
assume a value and an intention. The transposition of this process to digital has
found great obstacles due to the simplification of the process, as it relies on one
machine to digitalize, another to draw and a third one to print. - In the same way that a designer is not necessarily an architect, it’s equally impor-
tant to note that a computer operator is not an architect. In both situations,
drawing practice constitutes the consequence of know-how, specific knowledge
and determined intention.
Generally, it is accepted that new technologies have brought important benefits to
project drawing. However, these benefits cannot be associated either to the simpli-
fication of the drawing or its modus operandi, which is, by definition complex.
The teaching of architecture and particularly, of project design, should be able
to deal with these and other problems which are part of a student’s learning process,
even when ill informed and many times, ill prepared.
For these reasons, it is increasingly important to know how to deal with new tech-
nologies as a basis for the establishment of new instrumental and operational tools,
which may contribute to the success of project development rather than frequently
contributing to the realisation of hybrid solutions, which are empty of meaning and
subject to superficial appreciation, as they never surpass the dimension of appear-
ance.
Since they are fundamental, whether in day to day life or in future professional
practice, which is why they should be included in academic preparation, the tools
offered by new technologies should, first and foremost be evaluated in order to
determine how they could be integrated in the learning process. This has also to do
with some curricula of architecture courses.
For this reason, it would be a mistake to begin from the principle that computer
assisted design systems, the modelling of solids, image handling programs and others
constitute a given fact of the problem, as first and foremost, a criterion should be
defined as well as a method for its use.
The sketch as a place of converging thoughts, intentions, dreams, ambitions; the stage
of confrontation between the possible and the impossible, the real and the imaginary
- the draft as a symbolic structure – cannot be diminished or devalued.
Both the draft and the drawing show themselves as fundamental structures for
the development of architectural thought and they should be assumed in the learn-
ing process as a means of exercising and comprehending the conceptual dynamic of
the project.
Curiously, I believe that these are fundamental aspects required in the successful
use of the machine and its possibilities.