Building Drawings : Decoding and Recoding the Graphic Projection Algorithm in Architectural Representation
Supervisor: Denis Derycke (ULB)
Scientific Committee: Judith le Maire (ULB), David Lo Buglio (ULB), Jean-Louis Genard
Funding: Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) & Auguste van Werveke-Hanno Foundation (Fondation de Luxembourg)
Abstract
By examining the persistence of projection, now blackboxed in Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software, I challenge the perception of its elimination and instead treat it as a valuable technical object. I focus on two major algorithmic formalizations of projection: one rooted in the principles of nineteenth-century descriptive geometry (Gaspard Monge, 1799) and another emerging during the infancy of computer graphics (Sketchpad III, 1963).
More specifically, the thesis is informed by the development of a software library in pair with the design of a flatbed plotter: an experimental tool – both digital and material – as a proposition to re-center drawing around projection, thus challenging CAD embedded projection. Through a combination of digital archaeology and uchronian thinking, I develop a Python library implementing axonometric operations, reviving the nineteenth-century method of axonometry by intersection.
This project redefines digital projection and deepens our contemporary understanding of drawing and representation: (1) Re-coding projection revives historical knowledge – and opens a negotiation between old and new affordances; (2) Drawing is redefined as process-based, in opposition with static calculated images; (3) manipulating explicitly projection operations instead of defining the represented object opens a graphical space of serendipity, a catalyst for spatial/geometric know-how.
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