Perspectives
This is a compilation of forty-or-so perspectives drawn by first year architecture students. Given to them as one of the first exercises of technically drawing a simple object bound by two vanishing points, the exercise comes to offer much more. Or rather, should I press that one can read much more? After all they are perspectives.
In addition to the original oblong (elongated cube) object, I suggested students to put additional features, partly so that each student applies the principles just learnt to exercise their knowledge of the subject and so that each of their objects is unique, almost creating an “alien� object – an object that is unknown to us. Creating an object without visual precedent is much difficult, for how does one draw something that one has never seen, and how does one even perceive and make an object that must never be familiar? In the present case however, one did not pre-decide on making alien objects. It was merely about evolving a known, standard and mundane shape into the undecipherable. This exercise has thus culminated into the hybridization of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Can there be a possibility where two known objects come together to generate a stranger? How would one go about employing this thought? Is there a method? Has this intention been fulfilled here? In this ambiguity, I am eager to find from the readers if the objects here are able to generate a sense of the uncanny.
The outcomes presented here begin to hint different patterns. While some additions seem like evident detached outgrowths from the basic oblong, few examples show how even smaller alterations can change the fundamental perception of the object. There are others where the oblong has merely remained a notion, and instances where its reading has further compounded. In my personal pursuit of achieving “aliens�, the basic object has grown different extensions to itself, those which can be read as organs that may perform imaginary functions, or sometimes even remain redundant. Often the overall object becomes vividly impressionistic reminding of a figure, icon or gesture. This brings me to notice how each object demands for itself a particular scale it must be seen in. Is the notion of scale embedded in the object; is it constructed through our years of visual training or do we impose scale on to the objects? To be sure, the interpretation of the same drawing at multiple scales is facilitated due to the absence of any reference to human scale. While it may seem to be a toy-
like object in a quick glance, the drawing soon becomes spatial and inhabitable when subject to a slow meandering gaze. Further, it is interesting to compare one drawing to another. Since each drawing is produced by an individual, and each addition / amendment to the basic figure is mostly personal, some of these drawings strangely begin to talk with each other. One will observe how, for example, few drawings are same configurations merely rotated, some fit into each other as positives and negatives and some others could easily be seen as a kit of parts. They could join each other to form a larger whole. How do these “communications� happen? Are these resultant compatibilities purely accidental? Do people work with a common notional repository of forms? If so, what are the mechanisms through which such a repository gets activated? I had asked the students to reproduce their working sketches into final drawings on square tracing papers.
While my original intention was to save them the labour and allow them to quickly trace their final work, I realized that the translucency of the paper lent me several further comparative readings on being overlapped. For instance, I observed that many of these drawings of the same specified object (the one before addition of parts) did not coincide with each other. The dimensions of many outlines differed. In addition, their view points and horizons constantly shifted. What added dynamism to the entire compilation are the students’ varying compositions of their drawing on the small canvas. All these reflections indicate the inherent nature of perspectives – the manifold ways in which standard instructions get interpreted, executed and a singular object in the head gets transmitted and reproduced.
Washing machines, paper weights, acupressure tools, milk cans, building blocks, household furniture – these drawings will remind you of all such objects. Yet, they are not those, or perhaps they share a familiarity
with all of them? How do we look at these products, or even reflect upon this exercise? The execution of this exercise, if one may excuse, can be observed in line with the history of perspective drawing. While much of the initial effort in renaissance art was to understand the principles of vision in order to replicate reality as it is, architects of the period furthered this technique to prepare realistic visions of the future. In a similar way, students prepared an object that was made available to them as a drawing but took it in a direction of the unknown mostly following their (own) aesthetic logics. The only difference in this case, perhaps was the freedom for students to be not bounded in imagination by scale, utility or gravity. Yet, this leeway is only to playfully sustain the spirit of the contemporary times, when almost everything seems possible – from future machines to transmutability of objects. I will be cheating if I said that all parts of all these objects are technically drafted. In times when computer softwares aid more than realistic visualizations and
renderings of spaces and objects, what does a class on hand-drafting perspective involving meticulous measurements on paper actually mean? Machines have certainly reoriented the value we put on traditional techniques of creating imaginations on paper. And we would be expecting too much from students to relive the passion of Albrecht Durer who tirelessly built machines to understand how, after all, the magnanimity of the world converged into his eyeball! Such curiosity neither fits contemporary zeitgeist, and nor can it be sustained in a world scattered within technological distractions. In such a view, these drawings are to be appreciated with a pinch of salt. While many are sincere, some drawings here are opportunistic - those which have been crafted to please the eye, or even finish the god-damn alien. These probably come from different evaluations of the machinemanual debate, and further the multiple ways in which students come to develop interest in the varied aspects of architecture. Many drawings here also contest the intention of applying the skills to be learnt through
this exercise, putting primary thrust on the imagination (which assumedly is free of skill). A closer reading of these drawings will bring us to an understanding of how the relationship between skill and imagination gets negotiated in the works of students. Yet we are fortunate to live in times when the expert who once produced perspectives by hand lives alongside his/her technological counterpart. In the course of this studio, the students got a chance to interact and learn the way in which perspective was traditionally deployed by draughtsmen or skilled architects or artists into making architectural renderings. Those renderings, to a keen observer would be venerable. Today however, the demonstration of skills, instead of the art itself, becomes the product of exhibition. The act of witnessing the art emerge makes us wonder! Whether the art or the act inspire us to pick up a pencil and produce art is an open question. One will quickly find oneself in the dilemma whether such a decision even makes sense in the age of the computer.
The computer still allows one to undo, redo and alter parts of drawings easily until one achieves the desired image. It is not easy to put oneself through multiple iterations, like the computer, until perfection. Many works here are witness to such struggle of achieving perfection. Errors and erasures have thus remained a part of this compilation. What attitudes do students have towards achieving perfection? One of my friends, in order to mitigate the trouble due to my idealism for perfection, would console saying that if you can’t achieve the expected, lower your standards. Perhaps many of us, in our times, were brought up with values of getting everything right, perfect. This often burdened us with a lot of self-expectation. Today, many students are freer, filled with enthusiasm and positive hope to perfect themselves over time. Errors or imperfections in their works do not bother them as they did to us. This allows them space and time and confidence to keep going. These drawings thus bring many of such experiences to me, which I anticipate, will be one of the many readings you
will also have. You will align with my thoughts if you are an architect, and more importantly a person teaching architecture. Moreso, I believe the thoughts shared above are also a result of subjecting architectural drawings to an art historical lens. I wonder if such an analysis brings to us any value in our teaching or making of architecture. Otherwise, this essay can be just left as a perspective.
Drawings by 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Chauhan Gargi Bhat Divya Bhowmick Aparajita Chavan Dhruv Dalal Karan Dave Shivani Dedhia Rushabh Gaikwad Shubham Gandhi Vidhi Gupta Shreyansh Gurav Sagar Gyanchandani Divya Hegde Arnav Jain Shrusti Rajesh Jalan Priya Kadakia Dirgh Kadwadkar Chinmay Kasebekar Shashwati Kelekar Rutu Kosadia Prachi
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Kubade Asmita Kuckian Vinisha Mistry Dimple Mulye Prajyot Neve Priyanka Panchal Aditya Parekh Riya Rawal Sitanshu Rele Maitreyee Saive Sandeep Salvi Trisha Shah Aagam Shah Deep Shah Nishi Shenoy Akshata Sogam Samruddhi Temkar Pooja Vadake Kaushal Vadher Yash Vora Harsh
a reflection on drawing studio works of SEA students 2015 | Anuj Daga School of Environment & Architecture, Eksar Road, Borivali West, Mumbai – 400 091. INDIA.