While technical drawings have existed throughout time, most drafts people have used some combination of table with slanted top and parallel rules. Other tools include the T-square and compass. Archaeological evidence even suggests the architect of the Greek Parthenon went so far as to scratch a technical drawing onto the marble floor to guide his workers.
Fast-forward to modern times; the pantograph helped usher in the modern use of mechanical and computer-assisted design (CAD). While some continue to use the drafting table and handheld tools, CAD has infiltrated even the smallest of offices and sole proprietorships to output technical drawings accurately and efficiently. Are we at risk of creating spaces and places that are less “thick” with meaning? Does the potential for a serendipitous culmination of experiences – as those we receive when we travel by foot instead of car, rail instead of air – give way to sterility and precision?
A new city, a new office, and a new career with a firm that expounds the very meaning of technical proficiency has left me pondering the nuances of what lies within the intentions and act of drawing a simple line? While the act of expanding ones proficiency elicits some excitement, in what way do the designs we manifest digitally, differ from those created through a less glamorous but still well respected discipline of hand drawing? How do the outputs of ISO, ARCH and ANSI differ from those where graphite meets linen, oil meets canvas, and art meets artist?
Perhaps I am dating myself, or at the very least beginning to sound like my parents - even my parent’s parents- reliving "the good old days" when beer was beer, not “lite” or “calorie reduced”. However, as I reflect on my most recent, even somewhat obsessive and masochistic musings with CAD, I find myself questioning the ability to imbue our work with the same infusions of experience, conscious thought, sights, sounds and smells associated with the simplicity and meaningfully deliberate representation of a hand drafted sketch.
In our attempts to model the real world, computer-aided geometric lines are used to represent straight objects that lack substantive width or height - an idealization of such objects programmed to be infinitely long but also lacking substance. While our brains become increasingly absorbed into a rigorous, unrelenting and repetitive digital logic, ‘real world' coordinates geo-referenced to a set of globally positioned system of data will strive to provide us with assurances of our place, even our existence here on earth. X, Y, and Z will be forever drawn within our documented, file-shared, and x-referenced lives, but will take no account or even acknowledgement of our experiences within the situated realities of that which we conceptualize, create, or document with a writing instrument. It is only then that substance to paper will resemble our real-time world. Instead, and in the meantime, I will assign myself to rotating around and around a limitless model space of infinite coordinates, all the while left wondering "when can I print?" If only it were the right scale ...
And so I am left; caught in a middle ground as a multi-talented individual that seeks solace in his ability to perceive the world through more corporeal representation, but a desire to utilize the productive abilities of a language that seeks to elicit my curiosity for exploration like a new city. It is with the knowledge that adaptability may be my strongest trait that I venture forth, seeking my opportunity to conceive of the next Parthenon that exists beyond the mere reproductive qualities of Autodesk’s newest drawing utility.
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