Learning to Draw Through Digital Modelling

Abstract

The education of architectural designers begins by learning
drawing and digital modelling following the notion that
students learn these new modes as instruments of
thinking in design process. Curricular arguments persist
about which mode should follow the other. Difficulties
occur when one mode replaces the other. Students
uninitiated to design seem to prefer the more immediate
volumetric visualization of digital modelling over plans,
sections, and elevations, representational views resulting
from the un-real ‘viewpoint’ of the section-cut, a means
only drawn out of reality through a way-of-looking NOT
natural-to-experience. Therefore, the primary difficulty in
learning to think through drawings is their abstraction from,
rather than connection to, realness – a needless initiating
ordeal that confuses rather than clarifies. Digital modelling
offers virtual three-dimensional images that seem to
students, by contrast, not quite as abstracted from natural
experience, albeit framed by non-physical, seductive,
machine ‘otherness’. This paper proposes drawing
pedagogy that learns from digital modelling by making
connections rather than distinctions that more seamlessly
connect abstract to actual. Projects will be demonstrated
that manipulate three-dimensional forms to initiate
drawing learning experiences. Drawing and its abstractions
can thus more readily be drawn out of experience and
made ultimately more concrete for design thinking.