The Rest of the Week / Notes on the past Tuesday

For Thursday let's meet first at 10h30 (not 10). I'll give a presentation about drawing. Drawing class people must be there. "Outsiders" are welcome too. It will take about an hour. Then we'd like to have a discussion about the ideas presented and then head off to lunch at 12h00.

Thursday afternoon at 14h00 both Marti and Brian will be in studio. We'll start with a short demonstration and discussion of some drawing techniques and then we'll do desk crits until 18h00 while you all work on these plan projections.

On Tuesday:
We talked about the two sorts of comprehensiveness- a) to figure out something in its totality and b) to make something thoroughly understood by others.

We also discussed the value of a narrative to the project- how a narrative attracts and gives "style" to a project but also how it gives the design decisions you've made a standard or plausibility to be measured and weighed against. A narrative is analogous to a rationale you set up to define what's rational. It can be a "World", like Italo Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES (That's what John's "Centre d'Etudes du Monstres Urbain" is.). It can be a "Process", like the first ten houses of Peter Eisenman (That's what Micah's "Traitements de Fenêtres Existant" is.) It can be "Uses", like both Koolhaas' and Tschumi's La VIllette. (That's what Chelsea's "Bureau de Villes Divisées" is.) And there are a number of other ways narrative (a rhetorical device) can generate and support a project. We'll point them out as you deliver them to the discussion and we'll help where we can to find it with you.

The main thing you need to do is keep drawing and exploring decisions. Figure out how you'd do everything in three different ways and then see which choices "fit" as a plausible project. Very nice projects will fall out of this work if you'll make speculations about things and relationships and such in drawing the project.

stories shape drawings shape stories shape drawings (loop)

I will be in studio on Friday afternoon to do some old grading and to help when asked.