| Popis: |
This study is about architectural drawings. I especially address how drawings operate in architecture theory, and stress a particular role that they play in facilitating critique and speculation as theoretical activities. In this sense, I dwell on the capacity of architectural drawing not only as representation but also as non-verbal polemic and argumentation. I study this capacity of drawing in relation to its potentials in the architecture theory on the city. I argue in the thesis that after the mid twentieth century architects were forced to acknowledge their own inability to transform the city in its totality—a position that Modern Architecture aspired to—and there remained the problem of rethinking the relationship between architecture and the city. The reformulation of this relation after 1960s positioned the city in its entirety as an object of study for architecture. This shift of the city within the architectural discourse from a pragmatic/project-oriented object to a theoretical object made architecture theory substantially more receptive of the existing city. And architectural drawing—as architecture’s historical interface with the built environment—started to operate on the existing city more in observant, analytical, and critical fashions. There have been theoretical practices deploying drawings’ capacity to engage with the city on a theoretical level and form architectural positions and theoretical frameworks. A theoretical practice deploying drawings has the particular advantage of engaging with its object through architectural form. And this dissertation focuses on the potentials of this approach. The dissertation has a threefold structure. After introducing my argument, in the second chapter I study three theoretical projects that deploy drawings and similar visual media: Il Monumento Continuo (1969) and Vita/Supersurface (1971) by Superstudio and the No-Stop City (1970) by Archizoom. No-Stop City, very briefly, is actually not a project for an ‘alternative city’, but it is the ‘existing city presented with a critical awareness’. It is a certain interpretation of the city; a speculation on architecture’s functioning within an imminent urban condition presented in drawings and contextualized in writing. I take this and the Superstudio projects as indicative of two things. Firstly, they represent an under utilized capacity of architecture’s visual machinery. Secondly, they are indicative of the aforementioned shift of city within the architectural discourse, and they engage with this shift. In the other chapters I study these two arguments respectively. Thus, in the third chapter I study what developing a theoretical argument through drawings means for architectural representation. I contextualize this practice in the representational discourse. In the fourth chapter, I look at what directing architecture’s visual machinery towards the existing built environment solely for critique means for architecture theory on city. I argue that rejecting to project an alternative city in favor of critically engaging with the existing one is indicative of a transformation in architecture theory on city, after which architecture is less occupied with the alternative urban models and more comprised efforts to conceive the city. Finally, in the conclusion chapter I study the particular potentials of such practices and what they entail in architecture theory. |
