This paper examines the interior as a condition that is continuously in production through the arrangement of objects and furniture. This is done along two lines of inquiry. First by examining a few different historical and contemporary conceptions of the domestic interior through the lens of architectural representation. Second by using the technique of laser scanning to document a number of inhabited interiors in two apartment buildings. Through a series of representations, or cloud drawings, produced from the scans, the paper presents three ways of reading the interior: as environments, as assemblies, and as materialities. Departing from Robin Evans’ writing on drawing techniques for representing the interior and their correlation to ways of inhabitation, the paper poses questions around how the understanding of the interior may shift when using emerging techniques for architectural representation. Through readings of Walter Benjamin as well as Sylvia Lavin, the paper discusses such shifts in relation to changes in the conception of the interior and the objects that it contains.
Drawing Futures brings together international designers and artists for speculations in contemporary drawing for art and architecture.
Despite numerous developments in technological manufacture and computational design that provide new grounds for designers, the act of drawing still plays a central role as a vehicle for speculation. There is a rich and long history of drawing tied to innovations in technology as well as to revolutions in our philosophical understanding of the world. In reflection of a society now underpinned by computational networks and interfaces allowing hitherto unprecedented views of the world, the changing status of the drawing and its representation as a political act demands a platform for reflection and innovation. Drawing Futures will present a compendium of projects, writings and interviews that critically reassess the act of drawing and where its future may lie.
Drawing Futures focuses on the discussion of how the field of drawing may expand synchronously alongside technological and computational developments. The book coincides with an international conference of the same name, taking place at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, in November 2016. Bringing together practitioners from many creative fields, the book discusses how drawing is changing in relation to new technologies for the production and dissemination of ideas.
Reuse of building materials is not just a problem of logistics and material flows. It is as much a cultural and architectural problem. One of the most persistent architectural conventions is to consider abstract space before objects and materials. Building elements and furnishings should be subservient to a larger whole. This approach is aligned with a view on the world that is inherited from industrialism, in which any materials could be sourced anew and moulded into shape indefinitely. Reuse, as a conceptual approach to architecture, is different in that the starting point is a specific and limited stock of elements and chunks of materials. Each piece of material comes with a set of qualities – a character – that may be amplified, subverted or altered. In addition, depending on the relation between the context of the original structure and the new structure, reused objects may be charged with different cultural value and meaning.
The climate crisis has prompted new imaginaries in architecture and design that go beyond technical responses to issues of sustainability and into critical and creative practice. Recent discourse suggests that architects and designers can intervene in this cultural condition by constructing and materialising alternative realities. Models, as means of representation, hold particular promise for such intervention, as they can accommodate both theoretical concepts and material interventions. These concerns are explored through Under Construction, a design project that imagines a city that is constantly being rebuilt using a limited stock of materials. Consisting of a scale model of a neighbourhood constructed from demolition waste, the project explores how salvaged pieces of material can be situated in “real” material flows while simultaneously representing something other than themselves. The project argues that the ambiguities that the blending of the real and the fictional result in can unlock new possibilities for architectural representation.
Interiors matter: A Live Interior will take a closer look at different conceptions of interiors’ temporality, duration and instability based on the assumption that the placing, replacement and reassembly of objects, furniture and entire interiors makes the interior a live environment, continuously in production. Through artistic investigations of making, by coupling craft and digital techniques, this practice-based research project explores interiors’ provisional aspects, from occasional arrangement of objects in a room, interiors’ and furniture’s lifecycle, material processes, to aspects of alteration and reuse. The three-year artistic research project is funded by the Swedish Research Council and initiated by Ulrika Karlsson and Einar Rodhe.
Commissioned for the exhibition Plots, Prints, and Projections at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Grain Figures is a play on our ability as humans to perceive meaning in seemingly random data. The visible grain of a set of specific sheets of pine plywood guide the boundaries of surfaces, breaking them down into layers. Lines separating one surface from another suddenly go astray and wander along a meandering streak in the wood. The grain of the material – its structure and image – starts to influence the regulating geometries of surfaces. On a massing scale, select curves in the variation in grain produce a set of figurative elevations – a fragment of a room or façade, a silhouette of a rock, or a map of a terrain. A closer reading of the installation’s surface reveals local features in the grain. These features are a result of the lathing of the veneer in the plywood: A spiralling section of a log that slices through knots and defects. They often appear as recognizable forms or patterns, known in carpentry as grain figures. Grain figures are commonly referred to as, for example, bear claws, crowns, bird’s eyes, burls, curls, fiddle backs, and quilts. Ultimately, the design of the installation is about seeing and retracing figures from the plywood and projecting them back onto its surface. The grain of the wood becomes a drawing and an instruction for design. Plots, Prints and Projections was curated by Ulrika Karlsson and organised by Architects Sweden, The Swedish Institute, Folkhem and Svenskt Trä.
Under Construction imagines a city that is constantly being rebuilt using the same stock of materials. At the Triennale, the project is exhibited in the form of a large model, constructed of materials found on demolition sites in Stockholm. Reuse of building materials is not just a problem of logistics and material flows. It is as much a cultural and architectural problem. One of the most persistent architectural conventions is to consider abstract space before objects and materials. Building elements and furnishings should be subservient to a larger whole. This approach is aligned with a view on the world that is inherited from industrialism, in which any materials could be sourced anew and moulded into shape indefinitely. Reuse, as a conceptual approach to architecture, is different in that the starting point is a specific and limited stock of elements and chunks of materials. Each piece of material comes with a set of qualities – a character – that may be amplified, subverted or altered. In addition, depending on the relation between the context of the original structure and the new structure, reused objects may be charged with different cultural value and meaning.
Under Construction is a fictional neighbourhood constructed from discarded building materials. It begins with a scavenger hunt where we visit demolition sites and collect building materials: fractions of concrete, plastics, bits of plaster board, steel studs, and a sink, and so on. By playing with the scale of this kit of parts, we imagine a neighbourhood constructed from reused materials. Armed with hot glue guns we erect a bustling city with a rich and varied materiality. As structures grow, interiors, furniture and infills between fragments are 3d-printed with recyclable filament.