Megalomaniacal Plans

Exploiting Time and Transparency

Abstract

If there is one drawing indispensable to the description and production of architecture it is the plan. As it slices through space and substance, it allows us to describe and communicate the partis, construction and circulation of a building, all with the benefit of a bird’s-eye, or God-like elevated view that confirms our architectural authority over the design. As the preeminent tool to conceive and construct architecture, the plan has evolved highly codified techniques of representation, including the superimposition of transparent layers of drawings to show alternative arrangements, additional storeys, reflected surfaces or site conditions. Superimposition thus allows an extrusion from two- into three-dimensions. This paper explores how this tactic of superimposition can also operate as an extrusion into the fourth dimension of time, to reveal insights into the histories of both drawings and buildings.

Three projects support this premise, described in intertwining, parallel texts of theory and practice, and in an accompanying gallery of images. Contextualised against Eisenman’s defining use of ‘superpositioning’, and Rossi’s analogical collages, the projects align with contemporary drawing-thinking practices of polyvalency and indeterminism. They develop a practice of using archival plans as a primary source for research and creative speculation. The resulting works explore three concepts: the conventions and possible future of analogue architectural representation; the use of the archive for speculative practices; and the use of speculative practices to construct new knowledge.

Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-03-01-Megalomaniacal-Plans