Reimagining Architectural Drawing and Representation

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue invites critical and interpretive perspectives on drawing and representation in architecture. We aim to re-evaluate drawing as a fundamental critical tool in architectural thinking and practice, and to question how representation transgresses and transforms disciplinary knowledge. We are interested in the possibility of drawing and an expanded notion of representation to articulate new ways to think about, problematize, and remake the city, the subject, and the world. The importance of drawing in architectural culture needs to be continuously rethought in light of new challenges: from transformations such as digital cultures, parametrics, and artificial intelligence (e.g., Carpo, Deamer, Easterling, Steyerl, and Manovich); how drawing is used for mapping cities, territories, and processes of urbanization (e.g., Allen, Aureli, and Viganò); and drawing as a critical tool for typological thinking (e.g., Agrest and Gandelsonas, Beigel and Christou, Hejduk, McEwan, Lerup, and Rossi). We are interested in contributions that trace critical genealogies that position and situate drawing and representation in an “expanded field” (e.g., Evans, Pérez Gómez, Vidler, Wells, and Wigley). We are interested in contributions that subvert these notional boundary conditions.

We ask:

• What is the critical role of drawing in architectural culture today?
• What are the themes, methods, media, and genealogies that are relevant to rethinking representation today?
• Can drawing itself become a “project” that intervenes in how architecture frames and engages pressing issues about the contemporary city, the Anthropocene, or social and political matters?

Suggested themes that papers might address, but are not limited to, include the following:

• Expanded representations: Papers exploring and explicating new and emerging intermedial, trans-medial, or hybrid modes of drawing and representation aimed at confronting contemporary spatial, environmental, and social issues.
• Crises and representation: Papers exploring how traditional architectural drawing types can be reconfigured to provide new ways of designing, seeing, and thinking at a moment of Anthropocene crisis and the urban to nature continuum.
• Drawing practices and pedagogy: Papers exploring the role of drawing and representation in architectural education, drawing as a pedagogic method, formal analytic tool.
• Translations and transpositions: Papers exploring how methods of representation from other disciplines may be reappropriated for use in architecture and how architectural drawing methods might have value in other disciplines.
• Critical genealogies: Papers tracing historical and theoretical ideas and examples that position drawing and the crises of representation within changing material, cultural, and technical contexts.

We welcome submissions that are historical, theoretical, or practice-based, including papers, visual essays, and speculative drawing projects that critically engage with questions of drawing and representation.

Selected bibliography:

Agrest, D., & Gandelsonas, M. (with Vidler, A.). (1995). Agrest and Gandelsonas: Works. Princeton Architectural Press.

Allen, S. (2009). Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation. Routledge.

Aureli, P. V. (Ed.). (2014). The City as a Project. Ruby Press.

Beigel, F., & Christou, P. (2010). Architecture as city. Springer.  

Carpo, M. (2017). The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence. MIT Press.

Deamer, P. (with Rendell, J.). (2020). Architecture and Labor. Routledge.

Easterling, K. (2021). Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World. Verso.

Evans, R. (2012). Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays (M. Mostafavi, Ed.). Architectural Association Publications.

Hejduk, J. (1985). Mask of Medusa: Works 1947–1983. Rizzoli.

Lerup, L. (2017). The Continuous City: Fourteen Essays on Architecture and Urbanisation. Park Books.

Manovich, L. (2013). Software Takes Command. Bloomsbury.

McEwan, C. (2024). Analogical City. punctum; https://punctumbooks.com/titles/analogical-city/. https://doi.org/10.53288/0386.1.00

Pérez Gómez, A. (1982). Architecture as Drawing. Journal of Architectural Education, 36(2), 2–7.

Rossi, A. (1979). Aldo Rossi in America: 1976–1979 (P. Eisenman, Ed.). MIT Press.

Space Caviar, & Wigley, Mark (Eds). (2021). Running Architecture in Reverse. In Non-Extractive Architecture Vol. 1: On Designing Without Depletion (pp. 41–56). Sternberg Press.

Steyerl, H. (2017). Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War. Verso.

Vidler, A. (2000). Diagrams of Diagrams: Architectural Abstraction and Modern Representation. Representations, 72, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/2902906

Viganò, P. (2016). Territories of Urbanism: The Project as Knowledge Producer (S. Piccolo, Trans.). EPFL Press.

Wells, M. (2021). Survey: Architecture Iconographies. Park Books.

Prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors are invited to propose an initial title and a 200-word abstract summarizing their anticipated contribution. Please send initial submissions to the Guest Editors (c.mcewan@northumbria.ac.uk and shaun.young@northumbria.ac.uk) or the Architecture Editorial Office (architecture@mdpi.com). Initial submissions will be reviewed by the Guest Editors to ensure fit within the scope of the Special Issue, prior to sending papers out for review.

Dr. Cameron McEwan
Dr. Shaun Young
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Architecture is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• expanded representations
• crises and representation
• drawing practices and pedagogy
• translations and transpositions
• critical genealogies