Looking as Inquiry: Drawing the Implied Urban Realm Allison Dutoit
I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand (Chinese proverb)
I first heard this saying in a different form:
What you hear you forget
What you read you remember
What you draw you understand
Students of the built environment often profess a love of drawing. In many instances,
the drawings they love imagine unbuilt worlds, projects under design, sketches jotted while on the telephone. Portraying accurately the world physically around them is a far more difficult task. It is more difficult still to analyze the qualities of the urban
realm. Yet most projects, and most design curricula, begin with site analysis and careful, at times measured, depictions of the physical fabric. This essay explores ways
by which observational drawing can challenge assumptions about, and improve understanding of, the built public realm.
“Urban Design Journal,” a course initiated by Lars Gemzøe, was the child of an earlier, more architectural, course titled Visual Journal based in the streets and squares
of Copenhagen.1 An interactive drawing session in the public spaces of the city
followed on weekly lectures and related readings. The exercise, developed from the lecture and reading for the week, was configured to elicit critical understanding of the
thinking, observation, and manual skills. A sketchbook was the primary medium for
recording the field studies and study tours which were the meat of the class. A sketchbook keeps the author close to the content, both literally and emotionally. It records shortcomings as well as successes; all remain to be evaluated as instructive
exercises. Rather than falling to conventional drawing types such as perspective or plans -- projections which can mask many of the activities that occur in urban spaces
-- we attempted to propose inventive means of urban exploration that suitably paralleled the ideas presented in talks and readings.
Drawing is a means for connecting abstraction to reality—and vice versa. Expanding the conventions of architectural drawing using literature and contemporary thinking
allows the students to better see the range of activities that do or might occur, as well as to assess the qualities of experience and place.
Drawing as Inquiry
The drawing, whether manual or electronic, remains the prime tool for the discipline
and practice of architecture. Beyond the first ideation sketches, accuracy in dimensions, proportions, scale, construction, and materials acquires increasing importance. The drawing attempts to unambiguously connect to the idea, a
two-dimensional surrogate for conditions in the three-two-dimensional world. The reference here is not to architectural representation which relies on precision alone to
communicate a built condition. Rather, it is drawing as a means to discover the relationship between the qualities (dimensions, proportions, scale, construction, materials, and so on) and life within these urban spaces. Site analysis, if done well,
hard data (dimensions, quantities, geometries, orientation) and soft data (experience,
use, activities). Typically, on-site sketching involves measured analysis for design, or recording travel experience. The former often results in careful plans, at times
including dimensions, while the latter favors perspective drawings depicting the
character of the place.
Drawing is a necessary and reliable tool, but architect students rarely push the boundaries with which they learn the medium. I do not question the importance of construction and technical drawings, nor the accurate and consistent methods needed
for these and site analyses. But in learning to read and design the built environment, as well as for developing critical faculties and spatial awareness, accuracy is not the
only means. Testing the boundaries of conventional drawing practice supports the exploration of a wider range of urban experience. In other words, one should question the truth of architectural representation when attempting to understand the city.
In particular, the student of the urban realm—especially those spaces referred to as
“the in-between“—tends to rely on public policy and constructed elements as the vehicles for understanding and developing new places. The literature on “good practice” is filled with instructions for making ”good quality urban spaces” . But if
details are the providence of the gods, the means by which we interpret and act upon
1 The courses mentioned are part of the Denmark’s International Study Program. Lars
Gemzøe originated the cores of some of these exercises. Helle Søholt and Courtney Coyne-Jensen taught iterations of the course, and were instrumental in developing the
syllabus. Courtney has developed the scroll exercise, and continues to develop it in a myriad of ways. We have each built onto the original course structure, inspired by
the physical aspects of the urban realm is consequential. The process of design needs
to question assumptions, and drawing provides a ready design tool for these investigations. In my experience, spaces deemed ”bad” by the profession and the public rarely are rarely recorded in the sketchbooks, as they are not regarded as
worthy of sullying the pages of a moleskin notebook.
The reductive nature of orthogonal drawings used alone results in prescriptive
practice. Prescriptive architectural drawings can appear merely as a transcript of right and wrong, if the heart of work does not appear in drawings that transcend its physical
dimensions. The celebrated Nolli Plan of Rome provided insight into the public nature of the city through a new form of graphic plan. Yet, when we look at this plan we still
require additional information to truly understand the spaces.
Perspective drawings, executed on site, explore space and depth, enclosure, and
perhaps light and shadow. In my experience, these constitute the ”safety zone” for students. When in doubt, sit down and draw a perspective. The act of drawing may
become a sort of “soothing nothingness”, creating a pretty picture focussed on an object in the space, rather than the enclosure or the space itself. Or, students draw what they think they see; what they cannot possibly view from their position:
drawings made with floating viewpoints, composite views, or incorrect proportions. The mind knows that the openings are more than millimetres wide, and yet the hand
records windows that jump from plane from the wall or vanish to multiple points on the page. This is not an intent to replicate movement on the students’ part—as did the Cubists—but generally a lack of knowledge of Western perspective and more
eye collects, based on accepted graphic conventions. There are many systems for
depicting space, of which Western perspective is but one. We must learn to see in perspective before we can draw using its dicta, and even then our view is skewed by optical bias.
The fixed viewpoint keeps the picture static. Yet our experience engages continually
shifting viewpoints and frames. In Questions of Perception, Juhani Pallasmaa writes “Our experience of a city can only be … perspectival, fragmented, incomplete. (It) consists of partial views through urban settings, which offer a different kind of
involvement or investigation.” 2
Thus, perspective drawings serve a valuable purpose, although, perhaps a limited one. Perspective drawings allow a first tentative and limited exploration of spatial
characteristics. Orthogonal drawings—for example, plan and section—are additional
tools for analysis and precise measurement. Prescriptive drawings defend a ”truth”. Exploratory drawings, in contrast, search for multiple truths, and at times sin in the
form of small white lies. There is no question that drawing, like any graphic form, is not neutral, but sometimes a more subjective means is warranted. Le Corbusier cautioned us that: “One draws in order to penetrate, and to incorporate what one sees
into one’s own history.”3
2 Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Questions of Perception:
Phenomenology of Architecture, Second edition, San Francisco: William Stout, 2007,
p. 48.
3 Le Corbusier, Creation Is a Patient Search, James Palmes, translator, New York:
The meanings of the English word ”draw” suggest the tactile nature of the act: to drag, to elicit, to provoke, to eviscerate, to accumulate, to delineate. Only the last implies a purely visual activity, or more appropriately, an activity addressing visual
interests. In the course “Urban Design Journal”, we considered drawing an activity in which the whole body participates, as well as the shared nature of being. We
developed exercises intended to challenge assumptions about what was seen, of traditions of depiction and habits of use, in order to better understand life in the public realm.
“To sketch”: from the Italian schizzo, from schizzare; “to splash.”
Serial Vision
The presence of the body in the space affects the scale and the hierarchy of the
drawing, just as it affects the place. Our perceptions of a given space change with the time of day and the seasons, although the physical attributes of the place may remain
largely the same. Gordon Cullen applied this notion to a technique he called “Serial Vision.”4 In this, Cullen coupled a plan/map of a given route with perspectives drawn
along the way. The sketches captured the memorable aspects of the route: elements
and phenomena that pull us along to a destination perhaps undetermined when we started out. This kinetic seeing and capturing underscores the actions implicit in urban
space. We are rarely at rest in public, a factor that contributes to the appeal of urban places.
First, the students read Cullen and try to adopt his manner. Venturing into the city,
students then explore a particular route. Drawings evolve, sketches alongside a plan. The size of the sketches is individually determined at the start of the exercise, creating a sort of filmstrip that focuses the sequence rather than the single image (figure 1).
The group begins at the same place but subsequent sketches are individually determined. Deciding the route is key, demonstrating that one of the delights of
drawing is the continual evolution of assumptions and the acquisition of personal knowledge. Markedly different are what is intended before the pencil touches the page, what I see before me before draw, and what develops while drawing. First
assumption are questioned, at times set aside, for an understanding more rich and subtle (figure 2).
While at face value this exercise appears to concern perspective alone, the student drawings extend far beyond perspective as a graphic form. Recurring student
questions ask: “How do I know when to start the second drawing?” or “How do we know how to navigate in a city?” Cullen writes in his introduction to Townscape: “We
discover that no sooner do we postulate a HERE than automatically we must create a THERE.”5 He boils down the answer to consider optics, place, and content. The
student attempt to draw experience as well as what they think they see. Their
perceptions are influenced by other students and people present in the space, the time of day, the weather, and practicalities such as a safety from traffic. In the end, the
exercise is less about the drawings than about understanding the nature of the route and the factors that influence our experience along its path.
Drawing allows us to at least momentarily disengage from making distinctions
between “good” and ”bad”, and from evaluating the place as a whole before understanding the pieces. As the pencil works the page, our eyes question the information being recorded, assessing the relative importance of each element.
Drawing thus depends from time as well as space, and scale becomes malleable.
Throughout the exercises we look at qualities rather than quality taken as a singular. Cities are places of notoriously messy juxtapositions; we need to reveal what is implied as well as what is shown: the ledge at times serves as a seat, a meeting place,
or a surface upon which to eat lunch. We tend to think that we understand the scene before us, but there is much which at first remains hidden from view. These aspects,
revealed only through time and witnessed activity, are the aspects from which we ultimately construct our notions of places (figure 3).
Giuseppe Zambonini discusses subjective and objective properties, those mysterious intentions vs. physical realities: together they comprise an essence.6 We are thrown by
all we see: complexity and magnitude stymie our objective mind. This confusion may introduce compelling ”accidents” however, accidents by which we see the essence. To embody this essence in drawing we draw must subjectively, ranking each constituent
with relative importance within a subjective hierarchy. In this way the meaning may take precedence over dimensions. Zambonini refers to this as the “artifices of scale.”
A monument may acquire a presence well beyond its size depending upon its location, just as the presence of a person can change our perception of the space.
6 Guiseppe Zambonini, “Representation and/or the Making of Form,” in Rob Miller,
editor, Implementing Architecture. Atlanta: The Architecture Society of Atlanta,
Scroll
Essence by accident provides the theme for the next project. This exercise often accompanies the schematic phase of an accompanying design project. By that point in
the term the students already know each other and have established directions for their individual design projects. We all venture into a public place, usually indoors. The
central train station, the winter garden of a museum, or even a contained public square have yielded good results in prior iterations of the exercise (figure 4).
The students unroll a large strip of paper to create a long scroll with students gathering on both sides. On the scroll they draw their perceptions of the space in
which they are now working—Copenhagen’s Central Station is shown in these
examples. By drawing separately and on top of one another they intertwine experience and culture and vision—drawings that transcend only what the eye captures in a single
view. The scroll brings them in touch, literally—in touch with the experience on the city. As they work the students start to play off each another, and devising other ways
of depicting, or better stated, looking and feeling. The exercise is an attempt to lose what Juhani Pallasmaa refers to as the “visual frontality of the architectural drawing.”7
If one student’s drawing runs into that of his or her neighbor they must change their
position to continue the line. In the process they also change their point of view. Literally, the point of viewing, the station point, of the drawing has shifted and they
now see different objects and relationships than they did in their first position. As their view (visual) of the building changes, so too their view (idea) of the building. Another situation produced a different drawing condition. If a student opted to
continue on his or her own drawing rather than changing place with a neighbor two
different drawing intentions confronted one another, forced the student to consider
what that neighbour saw. This literal switching of places altered the response to the space and broadened the vision behind the drawing. By having to draw upon what the neighbor had begun, the student noticed aspects of the place until that moment
overlooked (figures 5, 6).
In the classical training of artists, apprentices would draw or paint the works of great masters in the museum to understand technique and composition. Putting on the role of another, or being confronted by another’s perceptions, allowed these students to
move beyond their first impressions of the building. The importance of peripheral vision and an acceptance of a certain humility are both necessary to make a group
exercise such as this one succeed.
There is also value in setting aside, at least temporarily, the personal for the
communal. Architecture is often regarded as a large three-dimensional canvas for personal expression. But unlike most fine art, the people using the building are stuck
with the result although they have often had little choice in the making of the place. Architecture is rarely a personal pursuit even if work in the design studio is treated as an individual activity. In the scroll exercise, the result is also the work of many hands,
much collaboration, editing, and debate. What is valid? What is true? What is relevant? The awareness is ultimately personal, of course. There are no intended
revelations or theses new to the field, only personal discovery.
To see and sketch materiality takes time. “We have a mental need to grasp that we are
rooted in the continuity of time and in the man-made world it is the task of
architecture to facilitate this experience. Architecture domesticates limitless space and enables us to inhabit it, but it should likewise domesticate endless time and enable us
to inhabit the continuity of time.”8 Moving beyond perspective and the limits of a
single view—a characteristic of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright—lie the land
of multiple views and complex experiences. Drawing here attempts to capture the qualities of the “haptic city” that allows us as designers to engage in the life of the city.
The city comprises streets and buildings and monuments and parks and bus routes and bollards …. Yet our personal city features small elements experienced in our daily
routine: the signs in the window of the crazy person’s house, the button we push for crossing the street, the clock on the corner building, the tree that serves as timekeeper for the seasons. The Mind Map exercise charts that city.
There is a need to understand the (possibilities of) multiple aspects that accompany
each element in the city—to understand the bench as a border, as well as a seat; the tree as a monument, as well as a shading device. Neither is more important—both feed each other. Of greater importance is the interplay of action with element —and
with memory. Each explicit capacity contains an implicit capacity of equal merit and power.
After reading a text from Jean Baudrillard’s America, students illustrate their perceptions of the city9. It is a field study in the mind for the American students in
Denmark. Studying in a foreign city presents a myriad of differences tiny and
immense that cease to be noticed after familiarity sets in. Once the pattern from home
to school is established and secure, the students seldom question the precise
organisation of traffic, entrances, processes, and furniture. The brief challenges the students to describe particular qualities derived from comprehensive view, sequences,
and details using maps, sections, freehand sketches, and other illustrations. The daily encounter with the city produces personal differences in reading the urban structure,
the effect of use on form, and that of memory on legibility. There is no concern for cartographic accuracy (figures 7, 8).
That this exercise brings out the citizen in the architecture student is of considerable interest to me. The trappings of style and design tend to evaporate—at least to some
degree—replaced by sensitive renderings of a city experienced. Illustrations of place supersede illustrations of urban elements as visual features. Genus loci is evident. With little or no familiarity with his writings, the students have exposed Kevin
Lynch’s elements of legibility through their own everyday experience.10 “A building
is encountered, it is approached, confronted, (utilised as a condition for other
things).”11 The city is of the setting for such encounters, as individual buildings (may)
give way to readings of space, or stand out as landmark destinations. The city, at its richest, is a series of tacit situations. The great cities thrive on uncertainty and
informality, although they may appear quite formal in their plans. If, as William Whyte has told us, a “good new space builds a new constituency”, then it is the
configuration and elements of that space—the floors, walls, furniture and edges—that must stimulate occupation by the citizenry.12 What one sees is shaped by the means by
9Jean Baudrillard, America, London, New York: Verso, 1989. Translation: Chris
which we see it. A casual glance is not enough; exploratory drawing forces the
engagement with the visual, phenomenal, and haptic cities, dampening the primacy of the aesthetic impact while fostering a deeper comprehension of the multiple, messy, lovely qualities of place and its boundaries (figure 9).
10Kevin Lynch, in The Image of the City (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960), provides a
method for evaluating city form, which relates to people’s mental maps of a city.
11 Juhani Pallasmaa, Eyes of the Skin, London: Wiley Press, 2005, p. 63.
12 William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces Washington DC: The