Why not, you may ask, sketch your next museum project on an iPad or in your Moleskine with a fountain pen? This would lack mystery. With fewer people smoking nowadays, it’s unlikely that a significant project will be sketched on the back of a matchbook, but for the architect on the go, five-star-hotel stationery or bar coasters offer a perfect foundation for the Promethean doodle. ![]() ![]() Can you imagine, from your business suite on the 108th floor, that your tower was first drafted on an Emirates airline menu after a second cognac halfway through a long-distance flight? Or from the walkway in your art museum, where a Richard Serra looks like a mere scrap of metal under the gigantic glass dome, that its audacious forms were roughly scribbled on a sticky note minutes before the first design meeting? The more rudimentary the sketch, the more vertiginous the gap between the creative act and its realization. Would a mile-high skyscraper, or a gravity-defying cantilevered structure, command the same public admiration if they were simply the product of computer calculations? We’re all told that prior to the insane math and technical prowess, there was a sloppy drawing. Practically all architects insist on this: the most elaborate software will never replace an end-of-lunch scribble on a torn-off piece of coffee-stained napkin. ![]() While the contemporary artist is hardly expected to know how to draw, but rather to have mastered the art of coordinating on the phone, there is still a persistent belief in the demiurgic ability of the hand of the architect.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |