Theatre of Operations: drawing as embodiment and empowerment

Lecture by Prof. Dr. Architect Jo Van Den Berghe KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Brussels/Ghent, Belgium

Drawing may be considered as the most prominent activity of a designing architect, who draws with different media ranging from the pencil to the computer mouse. The act of drawing is a multi-layered, multi-sensorial activity with a significant impact on creativity, creative output, thinking and knowledge production. It is above all an act with a long history related to mankind, hence to many disciplines that adopt the map, the symbol, the sketch, the plan, the section, the detail …, and all relate these to their discipline specific acts of drawing.

For Jo Van Den Berghe drawing is also a way of questioning the architectural construction and its mediation. It is an exploratory journey into depths of unveiling perspectives of the architectural drawing and the craftsmanship of the architect beyond today. Although indispensable to anatomise, drawing sections is crucial and should come up-front, but it is not limited to the common vertical section.

It includes fascination drawing (embodying and perceiving), cinematic drawing (detection of points of (p)reference), proposition drawing, section drawing, X-ray drawing, chronological drawing, anatomical drawing … n-drawings, applied to explore the meaning of drawing and the new gateways and avenues drawing can generate for normative architectural drawing (thinking) and its risk of stagnation.

Jo Van Den Berghe will focus on two specific ways of drawing, applied by the thinking architect: the (preliminary) sketch as the main catcher of ideas, and the handmade architectural drawing as a slow process of embodied understanding.

Drawing is Thinking

Lecture by Tom De Paor

Tom de Paor is one of Ireland’s most original and internationally renowned architects, with his practice in Dublin.

His work for architectural culture spans between buildings like Pálás Cinema in Galway and curation of the Irish pavilion at Venice Biennale 2010, his own exhibition in the same Biennale as well as 7th Biennale with a Martyrium in Peat, N3, the inaugural Irish representation in year 2000.

By invitation from E Hatz and G Carty SAUL School of Architecture Year 4