Design + Making

Abstract

Drawing is at once a mark made upon a surface and a derivation of meaning from the making of the mark. A cursory look suggests that drawing is merely a communicative medium not dissimilar from written language; the drawing is not important, but it merely serves as a vehicle towards the promulgation of the greater idea. The end - the idea - is divorced from the means of the communication of its message. However, a critical analysis of drawing reveals the potential of drawing in the design process as a construction - not as a representation of an idea, but as the manifestation of the idea itself • If architecture is to communicate anything, it is to communicate its nature as building - as the set of processes dealing with site, tectonics and circumstance. Buildings, whether intentionally or not, function as indices of their own making. The single direct index - for example, a footprint - is the residue of a physical action or event. It is a very specific manner of signification, but manages to be so without relying on previously ascribed symbolic constructions. It also differs from typical manners of signification in that it represents directly the act that caused its own existence rather than making various references to the myriad of ideas or actions that may be related to its existence. Through evidential reconstruction, where a series of indices can be 'read' to gain information about the action, the indices transcend mere categorization to collectively become a narrative of process, where the narrative is driven by a desire to exchange. This thesis investigates the relationship between design and making, specifically focusing on how the relationship between design and making can act more like an interface, which consists of the complex intersection of diverse elements, rather than a mediation where one element must be interpreted through the condition of another. Architecture - as parts and as a whole - is the physical manifestation of the variety of processes that contributed to its making. If architecture can be thought of as the confluence of site, tectonics and circumstance, how can the acts of both designing and making begin to intersect such that this confluence is revealed in the place, material and conditions of the architectural making?