Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices

Boldly, Charitonidou's new book Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices attempts to theorize the creative process itself by investigating the way luminary architects such as Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Aldo Rossi, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Oswald Mathias Ungers, Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas produce their designs in conversation with the times. She argues that architectural drawings should be understood as dispositifs that function as virtual meetings points of the ideas of the designers, the needs of the eventual users of the buildings, and the desires of the developers funding the projects. In this way, she shows that the virtual is already material and a necessary part of and not just a preliminary to the actual. It is a rich and powerful book that will stimulate debate and thinking in the field of architecture for years to come.

Ian Buchanan, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Wollongong, Australia

This book is an important contribution to our understanding of architectural design. Exploring the complex interplay of visual representation and architectural discourse, Marianna Charitonidou offers excellent and inspiring insight of how, over the last hundred years, leading Western architects used sketches and drawings as research and design tools, but also for shaping the roles of users and observers, and for architecture pedagogy.

Christian Gänshirt, Visiting Professor, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano

This book contributes to the contemporary transient and dynamic relationship between the work of architecture, the spectator, and the user. While the architect seemingly remains extraneous to the longevity and crisis of the triangle, Marianna Charitonidou’s retrospective agenda charts four generations of architects' contributions to the core idea of drawing, be it representational or abstract and diagrammatical. In each chapter, Architectural Drawings as an Investigating Devices provides a valuable discussion of the impact of socio-cultural and technological as it concerns the representation and reception of architecture. A timely reading as architecture departs from its past invisible ties with the city for a self-referential commodity form deserted in the megalopolis.

Gevork Hartoonian, Em. Professor of the history of architecture, University of Canberra, Australia