!e Axonometric and the Sketch: Pursuing the possibility of an autonomous, yet non-autonomous, disciplinary renderingby Greg Polvi

Abstract:!e axonometric has enjoyed a long life as a method for disciplinary drawing, a tool for architects to analyze and compare architectures with the utmost of seriousness. In the recent contemporary, the identity of the axonometric and its purpose within the discipline have been thrown into question, coinciding with many of the same questions being asked of the profession as a whole. Meanwhile, tools such as the perspective rendering and the animation have been relied upon to pick up the representational slack, given their ability to describe complex forms more e"ectively. Despite the reduction in the use of the axonometric, there has been no development of a disciplinary rendering in an e"ort to utilize its potential for architecture. No progress has been made towards a "drawn" computer rendering that provokes architects to analyze and discuss a project with the same type of disciplinary seriousness as the axonometric. !is text explores the possibility of this pursuit, and proposes whether abstracting the concept of the "sketch," and utilizing it with the computer rendering, o"ers architecture new options for an autonomous, yet non-autonomous, method of drawing.

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e Axonometric and the Sketch: Pursuing the possibility of an autonomous, yet non-autonomous, disciplinary renderingby Greg Polvi

i) In those days, every single one of them knew my name. e use of the axonometric in architecture carries with it a series of underlying narratives, both in relation to the contemporary climate, and to the instances of its past use. Whether being used in the drawings of Le Corbusier, or with Bruce Sterling and the New York Five in the early 1970s, the axonometric carries with it a long series of associations, making its history di cult to separate from the method itself. When an architect uses the axono-metric drawing, they refer to a signi cant lineage, including the physical action and process of composing a drawing, the list of names that have used the axonometric previously, and the relationship between a built project and its drawings. Using the cold seriousness of the black line, often there are no super uous additions that promote any sort of emotive quality, e ect, or material speci cation outside of the author's intent. Ignoring both the human

gure and the human perspective, the axonometric isolates the represented object from its creator and those that interact (or don't interact) with it, height-ening its status as a singular, autonomous thing unto itself. e axonometric is both precise, and a promoter of the value of precision within architecture, refuting the imperfections and distortion found in perspective drawing. John Hejduk's Diamond Houses, drawn in 1963-67, are an instance of process, representation, and design outcome becoming intertwined, with a drawing method that is inseparable from the process of design and the nal architecture. Hejduk's use of the overlapped axonometric cuboids in his drawings contains a proposition for engagement not only with the building, but with the tension created by its relationship to its drawings, which extend into the unbuilt, “built” form. Hejduk's translation of drawing into building muddied the de nition for each state of architectural being, blurring the boundaries of where the drawing ends and the building begins, and questioning which representational states can be considered architecture in and of themselves.

In Peter Eisenman's article, In My Father's House Are Many Mansions (1980), he refers to Hejduk's seven Texas Houses as being an instance of the architect "working on the language," in that Hejduk subjects the conventional elements of architecture to a painstaking reconsideration of their applica-tion and relevance, using Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier as starting points. is "working on the language" idea becomes deeply associated with the axonometric drawings that Hejduk deploys, leading to the two becoming deeply connected in contemporary thought. Today, cold black lines upon a drawing surface communicate a stern seriousness about the project's intent, and places the work within a conversational straightjacket focusing upon architecture's disciplinarity. A mylar drawing dressed in black lines causes the profession to adopt a similar dark wardrobe, and to assume a concerned, analytical expression while discussing the subject areas worthy of disciplinary concern (and rejecting the conversations that are, quote, not architectural problems). e communicational baggage saddled upon this drawing method is accompanied by other narratives that re ect the realities of drawing architecture in the present day. e edgling relevance of the axonometric has been shaken by the same existential questions interrogating the profession (“Who am I?”, “What is my purpose?”), and this panic* is partner to the discipline's search for stable footing and a re-purposed use for its conventional tools. e relevance of the tools of representation has been drastically reduced by the possibilities o ered by digital software and the forms that they can e ortlessly produce.*Given the axonometric's re-appearance and subsequent proliferation in the 1970s decade, perhaps we can glibly use the term “mid-life crisis” instead?

ii) is may be my last breath. Do I have anything left to say? "Architects make drawings." is phrase is a long-standing battle cry for some of the soldiers of architecture, those who take on the admirable defense of the discipline by acting as guardians of its values. Leon Krier's infamous, "I do not build because I am an architect: I am an architect therefore I do not build" quotation, is cut from a related cloth. Robin Evans pondered a similar possibility, albeit carefully and without taking sides, knowing he was walking in contentious territory: "We may choose to join architecture to the other visual arts more securely by insisting that only that which the architect manipulates with his own hands is his work." In periods of economic downturn, architecture has been able to lean upon the crutches of academia and the unbuilt project in order to propel the discipline forward. While the debate of paper architecture's contribution to the eld will continue ad in nitum, the economic situation of the late 60s and early 70s contributed to architecture re-purposing its portfolio of elegant drawings as a means for nancial support. e exhibition of drawings

Figure (above): Axonometric, Villa Stein, Le Corbusier.Figure (opposite): John Hejduk, Diamond House B.

James Stirling, or the New York Five in the early 1970s, the1

at gallery shows,7 a new occurrence at the time, emphasized a shift in the importance, and reverence, given by the profession to its tools of representation. "e axonometric drawing, in addition to the typical tools of orthographic projection, became objects of artistic consideration, and a way for art-sympathizing architects to roleplay alternate versions of themselves, elevated in artistic status.8 With the bene$t of hindsight and an understanding of the events that have transpired since that time, architecture has continued to be reduced in its contribution to social and cultural contexts. "e fetishization of the drawing, the reduction of the profession's in%uence, and the relative autonomy or non-autonomy of the discipline walk hand-in-hand. Within that context, the application of the axonometric today seems less to do with its usefulness as a means for comparing and analyzing architectures, and more a desperate attempt to regain some of the cultural stronghold that the profession once held. "e application of this obsolete tool in the attempt to uncover something new provokes a similar response as Alejandro Zaera-Polo's article promoting a uni$ed approach to the building envelope and his call to understand its political stake. While this text, !e Politics of the Envelope, is certainly applicable and prudent, it is hard to separate it, as well as the stubborn re-use of the axonometric, from an emotional cry of, "Wait... is this all that we have left?" While some may argue that the continued presence of the axonometric is a sign of its unwavering value in describing architectural objects, this article suggests another possibility: that its continued use is actually indicative of the uncertainty within the profession, and a frightened e&ort to protect the things that we hold so dear. "e use of the axonometric today is a small attempt at heroism, an attempt to revitalize the discipline through its disciplin-ary language. "e axonometric, which excels at representing rectilinear lines, extrusions, and the interplay of pure geometries, is helpless when represent-ing complexities that overwhelm the axonometric's ability to describe. Put simply, the contemporary $eld proposes geometries that are di'cult to represent with axonometric means of representation. Many calculus-based forms and other curvilinear geometry demand far more than oblique drawings and the conventional plan/section/elevation to describe. Put even simpler still: when asked to draw a weird form, the axonometric looks weird. "is cold reality has resulted in a plethora of other options for "architectural" representation, from the perspective computer rendering, to the animation that travels a path around the object. "e soldiers of architecture would certainly point out that none of these options were designed for disciplinary use, and in fact, were re-adapted tools, re-applied for architecture. While Maya and Rhinoceros are utilized for architecture, the tool is not speci$cally intended for the design of architectural objects, creating certain limitations upon conceiving a project. Architecture yields to the software, rather than the opposite. All of this converges upon the fact that the discipline has no means of drawing a rendering with cold, hard disciplinarity. Neither is there a discipline-focused animation that can be unleashed with complete seriousness, in the same way that the axonometric can be used as a call-to-arms promoting "architecture for the sake of architecture." Colour, textures, materials, lighting, weather, mood, atmosphere, air9... all remain issues largely underdeveloped and undertheorized in their relationship to the disciplinary drawing. Fittingly, while the discipline loses its grip on dictating its cultural signi$cance, it also struggles to $nd a way to represent its projects. After all, the contemporary equivalent of the "new axonometric" has not yet been devised.

"e drawing's contemporary relevance, and the pursuit of tools that are designed speci$cally for architectural outcomes, are ongoing consider-ations for Andrew Atwood of First O'ce. Atwood designs drawing machines wherein the architectural output is not separable from the tool that was used in its creation*, and the process utilizes productive gaps in the translation from drawing into object. Atwood has remarked that "the historical project of the axonometric and the intellectual pursuit of, 'What do you think?' was replaced by $gures and perspectives, the question becoming, 'What does it do? How does it feel?'"10 It seems hard to fully pinpoint the relationship between, 1) architecture losing its grasp on how to represent its objects, 2) the sensorially engaging perspective render, and 3) free form geometries, but there is a connection between the three that serves as a parallel narrative for architecture's evolving identity.*Given its previously-mentioned limitations, it is important to keep in mind that the axonometric is not only used for end representation, but can be used as a developmental tool that produces architectural form. !is places certain restrictions upon the architecture from the moment of conception.

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Figures (below): Axonometric, How to Domesticate a Mountain, Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark.Figures (opposite): Pinterest HQ and Peak on Peak, Andrew Atwood and Anna Neimark.

As noted, the perspective render utilizes certain properties – material, texture, lighting, etc. - in ways that an axonometric generally does not. Consequently, it doesn't seem like a reach to state that if a project utilizes the perspective render, the architecture is likely interested in achieving the architectural e&ects that can be represented by the perspective render. If this article is to make a naïve division and presume that contemporary projects featuring the perspective render are often driven by sensation and e&ects, and that projects described with axonometric drawings are driven mostly by critical thought and speculation, there is a clear overlap with Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation (1966). Sontag discusses the negatives of criticism (via criticism of her own) and the inevitability of artists planting elementary, critic-digestible tidbits within their work. "is, Sontag feels, compromises the artwork.11 As an alternative, she promotes sensation, something common in post-critical architecture that can be associated with perspective rendering. Without the shackles of intellectual criticism and interpretation, Sontag argues that art is free to explore its own boundaries. "Interpretation," she writes, "violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories."12 "is division of sensation-driven projects being associated with the perspective render, and intellectual projects being associated with the axonometric, seems conveniently reduced for the sake of this discussion; however, it does raise valid questions about whether this con%ict of architectural interests has played a role in reducing the axonometric's contribution.

iii) Sketch On a scale between "drawing nostalgia" and "new representational methods," the previously-mentioned Andrew Atwood places himself in between the two.13 "is article can empathize with that placement. Architecture can absolutely exist exclusively in drawing and have the contribution be of signi$cance for the profession. But there comes a moment when the soldier of architecture's martyrdom for the paper project takes a turn away from sel%essness and hurtles towards hopelessness. Architecture-for-architecture's-sake has reduced itself to the anti-social child that never sees sunlight, silently playing with his toys in the basement after his siblings, “who just don't understand,” have gone outside to play. Architecture has become so disciplined that it is now devoid of social skills. "e practical, if bland, realist, Reyner Banham, who referred to architecture's obsession with its own drawings as nothing short of "masturbation,"14 once warned that a "pre-occupation with drawings can insulate architects from the multi-dimensional space in which their building must ultimately be constructed."15 Architects need to re-evaluate the possibilities of the disciplinary drawing, and whether this tool can be reconsidered to give the profession increased agency with other $elds. "e discipline must re-emerge from the security blanket of the drawing and begin regaining some of its lost ground. Conveniently, the architect does not need to search far, for the answer is sitting under our noses, in a tool that is common to virtually all creative professionals: the sketch. Massimo Scolari, a wealth of knowledge on the history of the axonometric, describes the “sketch” as having lines that resemble "not so much the thing that wants to be contained as the thought to which it refers."16 In the sketch, a line does not describe an object. "e only lines that are drawn are the lines that carry ideas. For Scolari, the lines of the sketch "speak instantly with a single logic, because through its paths the hand imitates the idea with voluntary omissions."17 Other complementary and super%uous lines are not drawn in the sketch, as opposed to the axonometric, which achieves a high degree of precision in its exactitude to the represented object. While one of the strengths of the axonometric is considered to be its precision, the sketch is precise in its imprecision: “No instrumental precision, however hallucinatory it may be, can ever possess the in$nite richness of the free hand, nor bring about those extraordinary diversions in the sign which poorly prepared spirits abandon as errors.”18 "e gaps that are closed with the axonomet-ric's exactitude are opened with the sketch, made available for ambiguity, misuse, and misappropriation. While comparing two drastically di&erent architectural geometries, not an uncommon situation in contemporary terms, the precision of the axonometric becomes a limitation. Where does one begin to compare two computer-generated forms, both wildly di&erent from one another... two forms that both look... weird? "e sketch allows the precision to be reduced, and its ideas to be distilled so that they can be compared to one another as mobile diagrams, in the tradition of Rowe.19 "e sketch, thus, acts as a means of transport, a method for the transferral of architectural ideas from one profession to another. Architecture has traveled so far down the path of precision that to regain some of its footing it needs to open itself to pre-meditated inexactitude, and re-emerge as a contributor in today's cultural context. Scolari remarks that "form becomes $gure when the idea abandons it."20 "us, as the sketch is drawn entirely of lines that embody ideas, a sketch can never be reduced to an empty $gure. "e sketch cannot lose its status as form, because it cannot exist without the thoughts that embody it. Further, sitting at the centre of an otherwise empty white page, the sketch is an adaptable object, without scale, and potentially without relationship to the ground. "us, the sketched object has no orientation, can travel in its applicability, and can serve as complementary to other ideas existing outside of itself. "is deliberate act of releasing architectural ideas is an act of autonomous non-autonomy. What does a "sketch" look like in contemporary terms, and how can it be drawn? For this, the computerized render is $nally ready for disciplin-ary application. "e generic white-object-with-white-background can be successfully claimed, enabling inde$nite edges, ambiguous materiality, and unclear ground relationships. "e white render succeeds in communicating the diagrams of architectural concepts and ideas, de$ning just enough in its form to open itself for productive misappropriation. Returning to Susan Sontag, the rendered sketch leapfrogs the decided division between criticality and sensation found in Against Interpretation, and in the contemporary discipline in general, bringing attentiveness to the e&ect-focused capabilities of the render. Speci$cally, if an element of an architectural project is necessary to the expression of the transportable architectural

!e Axonometric and the Sketch (Page 3 of 4) For more work, consult my portfolio website: http://www.associatidesign.com !e Axonometric and the Sketch (Page 3 of 4) For more work, consult my portfolio website: http://www.associatidesign.com

When asked to draw a weird form, the axonometric looks weird (above): Axonometric, Peter B. Lewis Building, Frank Gehry.Drawings by Peter Eisenman.

idea (ie. colour, material, lighting, etc.), it is rendered deliberately and with careful consideration. If an element of the project is super%uous to the expres-sion of the idea, it is not rendered. "us, everything that is “drawn” in the rendered “sketch” is a deliberate act of inclusion, and the sketch can be consid-ered a document that rigourously identi$es a project's contribution to the architectural discipline. Crucially, this liberates the generation of guilt-ridden drawing devotees from their formal shackles, enabling them to explore entirely new possibilities that can't necessarily be drawn or developed in axono-metric, yet with no less of a commitment to strict disciplinarity. Jason Payne's recent renderings in his text, Variations on the Disco Ball, or, the Ambivalent Object, o&er one example of a “sketch.” "e formally-altered disco balls are projected upon black backgrounds that obscure their linguistic reading, and are presented to deliberately enable uncertain, second-ary interpretations. "e boundaries of the objects are unclear, yet the diagram of their idea, the linguistic challenge to the meaning of the disco ball object, is present, and open to ambiguous reconsideration. At a time when ambiguity is being conceptually embraced, it is time for architecture to accept the anxiety that will result from releasing its ideas to be re-purposed in other $elds, and to accept the uncertainty of how the ideas may be re-applied within the contemporary world - surely a terrifying thought to a conservative autonomist. "e time has come for architecture to enter into disciplinary-focused, non-autonomous relationships, and draw the resulting uncertainty with the same amount of earnestness that the $eld has drawn rectilinear axonometrics. Drawing has always held a certain degree of unlikeness to the built object, whether it be due to material constraints, construction errors, or scale di'culties. To accentuate those di&erences and mistranslations in the pursuit of productive results seems not only responsible, considering the context of architecture's limited, if not handicapped, role in present culture, but natural, given architecture's long-held tradition of transferring drawings into three-dimensional objects.

1. Banham, Reyner. "Iso! Axo! (All Fall Down?)." Great Models. Raleigh: North Carolina State U, 1978. 17. Print.2. Hejduk, John. "Introduction to the Diamond Catalogue." Mask of Medusa: Works, 1947-1983. New York: Rizzoli, 1985. 48. Print.3. Eisenman, Peter. "In My Father's House Are Many Mansions." Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings, 1963-1988. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2004. 122. Print.4. Frampton, Kenneth. "Re"ections on the Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of Contemporary Production." Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture. Seattle: Bay, 1991. 21. Print.5. Evans, Robin. "Translations from Drawing to Building." Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1997. 157. Print.6. Banham, Reyner. "Iso! Axo! (All Fall Down?)." Great Models. Raleigh: North Carolina State U, 1978. 19. Print.7. Ibid.8. Frampton, Kenneth. "Re"ections on the Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of Contemporary Production." Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture. Seattle: Bay, 1991. 20. Print.9. Atwood, Andrew. "Rendering the Air: On Representation of Particles in the Sky." Log 31 (2014): 47. Print.10. Atwood, Andrew. "Andrew Atwood." Faculty Series Lecture. Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles. 30 Mar. 2012. Lecture.11. Sontag, Susan. "Against Interpretation." Against Interpretation: And Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966. 10. Print.12. Ibid.13. Atwood, Andrew. "Andrew Atwood." Faculty Series Lecture. Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles. 30 Mar. 2012. Lecture.14. Banham, Reyner. "Iso! Axo! (All Fall Down?)." Great Models. Raleigh: North Carolina State U, 1978. 19. Print.15. Banham, Reyner. "Iso! Axo! (All Fall Down?)." Great Models. Raleigh: North Carolina State U, 1978. 20. Print.16. Scolari, Massimo, and James S. Ackerman. "Considerations and Aphorisms on Drawing." Considerations and Aphorisms on Drawing. Rovereto: Edizioni Stella, 2007. 7. Print.17. Ibid.18. Scolari, Massimo, and James S. Ackerman. "Considerations and Aphorisms on Drawing." Considerations and Aphorisms on Drawing. Rovereto: Edizioni Stella, 2007. 9. Print.19. Rowe, Colin. "!e Mathematics of the Ideal Villa." "e Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1979. 1-27. Print.20. Scolari, Massimo, and James S. Ackerman. "Considerations and Aphorisms on Drawing." Considerations and Aphorisms on Drawing. Rovereto: Edizioni Stella, 2007. 12. Print.

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Figure (opposite): Danae Ledgerwood, Celene Lehrer, & Lauren Rath, UCLA. Assistant Professor: Jason Payne