Imagination more than Illustration

(Sofia Barrabés Pérezg) 

A drawing serves architects as a process of searching and in the same time the understanding between the client and the architect without boundaries. The group SANAA for example, uses drawings as a method to express and gather ideas. For them a drawing is the foundation for shapeing and developing a project. While they are drawing they´re departing from the first thought and creating an idea considering to the desires of the customer, the specific characteristics of the site and their own interests. The method of using only thin lines without trying to create a fixed image improves the process, although it´s very complex to maintain an overview, because there are so many ways of imagination. 


(Anna Ferrer Fernandez) 

SANAA
 http://www.bauwelt.de/cms/artikel.html?id=1209121#.UnuMo_lWySo

SANAA, a group of Japanese architects draw strokes so fine that it seems like it were simple ideas that could be carried on in the future as a solution which was found over time for especially one project. Describing the building through the use of drawings, but without transmitting a concrete constructive method, brings them to further toughts. They believe that representing the constructive solution breaks the schematic and abstract naturalness that characterizes a drawing. The outline of a building, seems to provide a clarity that does not actually exist, and that is in the project where you find the external factors until then had escaped their control. This transition from the abstract clearly outline to the circumstantial contingency of a project is an extremely complex way. 

Modern architecture by SANAA / Photo: Jon King
http://news.domain.com.au/photogallery/domain/sketches-of-japan-20101104-17e88.html

The fine and incomplete lines, give the viewer a wide spread of interpretation. But it also shows the approach of the projects and the first thoughts of the composer.

Floor Plan Glass Pavilion, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio Courtesy of SANAA

http://www.architecturelist.com/wp-content/uploads/pritzkerprice2010-14.jpg

Even the floor plan is not formulated in every part. During the process of building and drawing, they are developing more details. 

The way SANAA is interpreting a drawing is compareable to El Lissitzky´s statement:


«Heute zu beweisen, dass die Aufgabe jedes Schaffens, so auch in der Kunst, nicht DAR stellen, sondern DA stellen ist, ist ebenfalls unproduktiver Zeitverlust.» (El Lissitzky)


As El Lissitzky said, in our times the final goods which architects and artists are developing is not the exact illustration of an idea rather more the exposition which gives the viewer a free space to interpret. DARSTELLEN should not longer be used. The new way of interpreting is DA STELLEN.