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Cooper Union exhibition rethinks the age-old act of drawing

Win, Lose, or Draw

Cooper Union exhibition rethinks the age-old act of drawing

At Cooper Square, the act of architectural drawing is bring re-analyzed in the context of a new era of computations and code-based processes. An exhibition, Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation Volume II, presented by the Cooper Union School of Architecture, in conjunction with the California College of the Arts‘ Design Lab, questions how rapid innovations in design and production technologies impact the ways architects engage with traditional drafting techniques.

Participants, such as firms Aranda\Lasch, MILLIØNS, and T+E+A+M, among many others, investigated the act of drawing with a nod to certain prompts laid out by curators Andrew Kudless and Adam Marcus. These prompts were: the psychology of rules, and whether they create room for design opportunity, or are factors which constrain; language, and theorizing whether writing and drawing engage with each other in architecture; and cipher, or the exploration of how drawings engage with and portray hidden messages.

All of the 24 entries on display were held to strict rules: they use consistent dimensions, the same black and white palette, and are all two-dimensional, and relate to at least one of the prompts written above. And yet, even with such strong guidelines, the differences and creativity in each piece are astonishing. Curator Andrew Kudless stated, “Even when there are constraints and guidelines, there are loopholes and variances that open up new potentials for architectural design and representation.”

The exhibition runs from January 23 to February 23, 2019.


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