desenhar em projecto: sete percursos

Drawing in architectural design is one of the most important tools we, as architects, have to think about transforming the world around us. Through design drawing, we travel into the unknown and, quite often, revisit places we have experienced and will never forget. The A1 tracing paper sheets resting on the drafting table, the blank pages of an A5 Moleskine notebook, and even the paper tablecloths covering restaurant tables are, by nature, our repository of memories: those we retrieve from our travels and books and, above all, those we create with each project. A project is a cosa mentale that our hands make possible. We may regard sketchbooks and drawing sheets as objects of artistic appreciation, yet at their core, they explicitly embody the search for a solution to a given problem—even if not a real one. While we may view the drawings of some architects as art, most of them serve a much more pragmatic purpose: solving a program in a specific place. We do not draw to display or exhibit. Rather, we draw relentlessly until we reach the ‘certainty’ that nothing escapes us, from the scale of the territory to the detail of a threshold. This process compels us to layer drawings, tirelessly reworking the same plan, the same section, the same perspective, and the same detail, both freely and with precision. Architectural drawing is not an end in itself. Models, writing, photography, digital drawing, virtual reality, and other tools complement this ancient method, which we have persistently taught in our school since the 1988-1989 academic year.