UE G : Drawing spaces

Summary

The proposed UE Drawing Spaces is conceived as a long-term research and teaching series investigating the foundations of architectural space through analytical drawing practices.

Content

Keywords

History of art and architecture, space, analysis, methodology, drawing by hand, reading.

Learning Prerequisites

Important concepts to start the course

Drawing is understood not primarily as a representational technique but as a research method through which spatial relationships, design intentions and constructive principles arise. Original drawings are not treated as historical artefacts but as active research material. Through analytical drawing students investigate how architectural ideas are translated into spatial form.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

• Analyze the spatial logic of a given project by means of an adequate analytical drawing.
• Identify and understand key architectural concepts and their material solutions.
• Develop a sense of construction adequate to tectonic and spatial intention.
• Recognize of the enhanced potential of a project designed based on a dialogue between architecture and construction.
• Interpret original archival drawings within their historical and disciplinary context.
• Draw plan and section, details, axonometry.

Teaching methods

Different spatial concepts will be analysed in depth and linked through time. Our tool will be in-depth analysis trough drawing understood as construction. Each spatial idea will demand a specific type of drawing or model to fully become transparent.

In the form of sketches, notations, axonometric explorations, plans, sections and details we will create a multitude of layers and material experiences, that maintains the student's capacity for precision and concentration, leading them to a continuous search for relationships in between all the elements creating spaces for negotiation and often having a fragmentary nature.

Critical understanding and discussion of key material (theoretical texts and drawings), direct engagement with selected drawings and material, analytical drawings, collective discussions and presentations.

Analytical drawing serves as a research method through which spatial relationships, design intentions and constructive principles become present. We conceive of architectural analysis as a non-reductive research method that does not seek geometrical patterns but takes apart and makes transparent the ideas, parameters and dependencies of the design process. Based on the three-dimensional spatiality of a work we will investigate through drawing by hand proportion and principles underlying different spatial concepts. An analysis that reveals a condition of possibility.

In an increasingly digital design culture, hand drawing is understood not as a substitute for computational tools but as a complementary practice. Its slowness, materiality and resistance to immediate completion encourage observation, interpretation and critical judgment.

Expected student activities

The course is structured around the investigation of three complementary spatial logics drawn from key moments in architectural history. Each logic is explored through analytical drawing, archival work, and theoretical reading.

Work to be analysed:

Schroder House (1924) / E.1027 (1929) / Tempe à Pailla (1932) / Maison de Verre (1932) Rather than treating these references as stylistic case studies, each one is approached as a methodological framework for understanding space. Each spatial logic requires specific representational tools in order to become analytically legible. Students are encouraged to adapt drawing techniques to the spatial question being investigated rather than applying a single uniform method.

We will work in collaboration with EPFL Archives de la Construction Moderne, a unique repository of original architectural drawings actively used for research and teaching. Dedicated sessions with selected themes in the archives will allow direct engagement with these materials, fostering a critical reflection. The study of key texts and exchange with the archives at EPFL will be an integral part of the UE.

-        Comprehension of and reflexion on spatial ideas in architecture and art and their connection          over time as history of ideas

-        Critical reading and understanding of theoretical texts

-        Reading, drawing and building of spatial concepts (analysis)

-        Development of adequate conceptual tools permitting to nominate space

-        Development of a sense of construction adequate to tectonic and spatial intention

-         Understand the influence of the past through the EPFL Archives de la Construction Moderne

Supervision

Resources

Bibliography

Adam, P. (1987). Eileen Gray: Architect, designer: A biography. Harry N. Abrams.

Colomina, B. (1996). Battle lines: E. 1027. Culture, Theory and Critique, 39(1), 95-105.

Constant, C. (1994). E. 1027: The nonheroic modernism of Eileen Gray. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 53(3), 265-279.

Evans, R. (1989). Architectural projection. Architecture and its image: Four centuries of architectural representation: Works from the collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (p. 369).

Futagawa, Y., Bauchet, B., & Vellay, M. (1988). La maison de verre de Pierre Chareau. ADA Ed. Tokyo Company.

Goldschmidt, G. (1991). The dialectics of sketching.Creativity Research Journal, 4(2), 123-143.

Gray, E., & Badovici, J. (1929). Maison en bord de mer.L'Architecture Vivante, 31.

Guaita, P. (2023). Accion y experiencia en la arquitectura: Materia y corporalidad en la ensenanza de la era tecnologica (Doctoral dissertation, Universidad CEU San Pablo).

Gussow, S. F. (2008).Architects draw: Freehand fundamentals.Princeton Architectural Press.

Ingold, T. (2016).Lines: A brief history. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315625324

Maynard, P. (2005).Drawing distinctions: The varieties of graphic expression. Cornell University Press.

Pallasmaa, J. (2009). The thinking hand: Existential and embodied wisdom in architecture. Wiley-Blackwell.

Perez-Gomez, A., & Pelletier, L. (1997). Architectural representation and the perspective hinge. MIT Press.

Sennett, R. (2010). Ce que sait la main: La culture de l'artisanat. Albin Michel.

Tversky, B. (2019). Mind in motion: How action shapes thought.Hachette UK.

Valéry, P. (1938). Degas, danse, dessin. Gallimard.

Vellay, D., & Halard, F. (2007). La maison de verre: Pierre Chareau's modernist masterwork. Thames & Hudson.

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/AR-424