Drawing and Building. The mixed case of architecture

Drawing and building mag.net performance installation nuages performance installation fluid adagio public plaza perform south street seaport museum | The mixed case of architecture In the discipline and practice of architecture, there is a codified relationship between drawing and building. But what is the nature of this relationship? While there are some similarities between architectural representation and pictorial representation, the relationship drawing-to-building does not seem to be one that relies on resemblance or identical ontology, as some would claim photography does with the object being photographed. Nor is it entirely abstract or notational like music, in which the score and the musical outcome of that score being performed bear no likeness. The case of architecture seems to be different from that of music and different from other visual practices such as photography, painting, and sculpture. I I.I The mixed case of architecture Allographic and autographic practices: the role of notation The distinction made by philosopher Nelson Goodman in his seminal work Languages of Art between practices understood as being autographic versus those that are allographic is of particular interest when tackling architecture, understood as an artistic practice.1 According to Goodman, autographic arts are those that rely on the direct contact of the author with the artwork for its authenticity. This is the case of some visual arts such as painting and sculpture, where the uniqueness of the art piece is as important as the knowledge of its history and particular conditions of production. Any reproduction of a work of art from the autographic group would be considered a replica or copy, and thus not authentic. At the other end of the spectrum are artistic practices with outcomes where the uniqueness of the piece does not matter, because it can exist in many copies and does not rely on the direct intervention of the author for its production. This is the case for music, poetry, dance, and theater, and is what Goodman calls the allographic arts. 2 The notion of authenticity acquires a different meaning in allographic arts, because they are capable of being produced at a distance from the author. Music is a particularly clear case of an allographic art because, despite differences that may occur in a performance, every performance of a particular music composition will count as an authentic instance of that work. 3 So, the uniqueness that is so important in autographic becomes somewhat irrelevant in the case of allographic arts. The production of a piece from a practice that is allographic relies on something other than the hand of the author of the piece; it relies on notation: an art seems to be allographic just insofar as it is amenable to notation, [...] Amenability to notation depends upon a precedent practice that 120 121 develops only if works of the art in question are commonly either ephemeral or not producible by one person. 4 For Goodman, the distinction between autographic and allographic arts allows for a rigorous discussion on notation. The classification of painting, sculpture, poetry, dance, 5 and theater as allographic seem to be quite uncontroversial for Goodman, but when he comes to architecture, unique complications emerge that put the clarity of the distinction between allographic and autographic arts into question. I.II Score, sketch, script, and digital–analog modes of representation Goodman seems to suggest that the relationship between the notational system of architecture (drawings) and its production (building) is not the same as the relationship that other allographic practices have between their notational system and the instantiation of their production. He points to this as being a reason because architecture is not ephemeral like the other arts of dance and theater and music; once a building is built it is there and exists independently of the drawings that were used to make it. Furthermore, architecture is a mixed case, because the modes of representation used are a combination of different kinds of representational techniques, which include the discursive as well as the pictorial. 6 An architectural plan has this mixed status because it is often a combination of graphic representation, in form of lines and hatches, and non-graphic representation such as dimensions, in the form of numbers, and specifications, in the form of text. /3digital 2฀ analog /3digital 2฀ analog Goodman classifies an architectural plan using three key terms: a score, a sketch, and a script. Even though a score refers to music, a sketch refers to painting, and a script to literary arts, these terms are expanded to include any notational system: Architectural representations seem to be a combination of the pictorial, in the form of a sketch, and the discursive, as a script, but Goodman claims that: although a drawing often counts as a sketch, and a measurement in numerals as a script, the particular selection of drawing and numerals in an architectural plan counts as a digital diagram and a score.7 But what does he mean by “digital diagram”? It clearly has nothing to do with producing something aided 122 by a computer as is commonly associated by the term. Goodman relates the digital–analog distinction to the notions of density and differentiation; 8 digital systems are distinguished by being differentiated while analog ones are dense. 9 The density of analog systems refers to the notion of continuous variation, in such a way that, given any two marks, there is always a possible third character between them. By contrast, digital systems are always differentiated and have a precise reading of what the representation refers to. Thus, digital representation is notational and analog representation is non-notational. A good visual example is a digital and analog clock, where the hour and minute hands in an analog clock are always in a state of motion, and readings from it will always be ambiguous and open to interpretation. While on a digital clock there is always a definite precise time, there is no ambiguity purely analog I.III Diagrams and models Architectural drawings are both notational and non-notational, digital and analog, insofar as they combine both pictorial representations (sketch) and annotations in text (script) and numerals, yet Goodman claims plans are more akin to being classified as a “digital diagram”.10 But what does purely digital he mean by ‘diagram’? Diagrams are not by definition either digital or analog. A seismograph would be a case of a purely analog diagram because its reading is not reliant on any notational system, its lines are the result of the motion of the earth and can be understood without added notation. A purely digital example would be that of a topological diagram, which relies mixed status on a notational system. In many cases, diagrams can hold a mixed status. For instance, ordinary road maps are a mixed case, containing both analog and digital elements. Most architectural drawings will also have this mixed condition of being both analog and digital, because there will be some sort of spatial quality that can be understood without the use of any notational device, but there are also symbols and conventions of drawing that may not be internal to the drawing itself. These either rely on shared conventions or a specified indexical system on the drawing. Models are diagrams that tend to have more than one dimension and could have moving parts. 11 Certainly, architectural models are threedimensional and often can be taken apart or have liftable components that 123 allow the viewer to see inside the space for example. An architectural model is analog with respect to spatial dimensions, but if chipboard is used to denote concrete walls, and acrylic to show glass, then it is digital with respect to its materials, because the materials used for the models are standing in for the actual materials—they are symbolically representing them. Architectural representation performs as a “diagram” in that it has this mixed status of being at once digital, hence notational, but also analog, pictorial, akin to painting and thus non-notational. This is one of the main reasons Goodman gives for architecture being a mixed case; its representation can be notational and non-notational, digital and analog. From the diagram below, we see how classical conceptions of painting and photography are representations of things that are already in the world (P2: representation ß world), while architectural representations are usually of something yet to be realized. (A1: notation à instantiation). notation allographic music ( M) architecture ( A) instantiation the world M1 the world A1 A2 the world A3 autographic painting ( P) P2 It is from this point, using the above diagram as a road map, that architecture’s mixed status can be elaborated on, by exploring the relationship that Goodman mentions but does not develop further, namely between the architectural drawing (what Goodman calls “notational language”) and the building (Goodman’s “particular production”) in architecture; 12 as well as a relationship which is unique to architecture—the relationship between the notation and reality or the world (A3: notation à world). 124 II Drawing and building “Architects don’t make buildings, they make drawings of buildings.” 13 While architecture is understood as the art and science of building, architects often find themselves removed from the actual act of construction. This is much like a composer, who may be removed from the performance of the piece composed. Even temporally, the work of architects and composers may be instantiated outside of their own lifetime. 14 This is not the case with other pictorial practices such as painting or photography. These practices require the direct involvement of the author as well as “a world” from which they are drawing inspiration to produce their work. II.I Is drawing to building like score is to music? The main element that distinguishes an autographic from allographic artistic practice is the existence of a notational system, as well as the direct or indirect involvement of the author in its production.15 In addition, uniqueness and authenticity, which are important in autographic works, are not relevant in allographic ones. Architectural work has a close affinity with music because “architectural and musical works, unlike paintings or plays or novels, are seldom descriptive or representational”.16 Indeed, architecture and music do not depict reality, as one could say painting and sculpture have traditionally.17 Architectural notations, like musical scores, are artifacts that can be decoded, read, according to shared conventions in order to affect reality by creating something that was not there before. Like music, it is a set of instructions for realizing another artifact. Architectural and musical notation are generative in this way because they create new things; a score music; architectural drawings help produce a built artifact. While it is indeed the case that there are some affinities, the relationship between drawing and building in architecture is not like the one between a score and a performance. For the production of allographic arts such as music, dance, and theater, the notation always needs to be performed in order to exist, while in architecture the production of its notation (the building via the drawings) only needs to happen once and then it exists and is appreciated independently of the existence of its notation. Once built, architecture does not rely on the drawings to exist in the way a musical performance may rely on the score to exist. This is one way that the relationship between music and its production is different from that of architecture; it does not need to be built in order to be considered architecture, it can exist solely in its representations. One could argue that architectural representations—drawings—often become ends in themselves; a drawing can detach itself from the represented object to 125 become an artifact in its own right, much like a painting. In these cases, it is no less architecture, whether it has been built or not, but its history of production does become important. Architectural representation is one of the first places where ideological changes manifest themselves. If we look at the drawings of Le Corbusier, for example, for the Carpenter Center, the relationship between drawing and building often exceeds their purely notational function, because drawing does more than just act as a codified instrument for the construction of the building. These drawings show things beyond the utility of what is represented; it illustrated Le Corbusier’s theoretical stance; the ramp and column grid are not mere utilitarian elements to get places without steps or support the structure, they are the spatial organizers, which speak to movement and the change in perception through that movement; it is about the experiences that the architect anticipates a user having. This is an example of an unbuilt project that is nonetheless considered architecture. Another example is the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, which is mostly unbuilt, but has nonetheless advanced the discipline via the representational tools at the disposal of the architect.18 Architect and author Stan Allen is critical of those who claim that the true power of architecture lies in the completed built artifact (a view which he labels as “conservative”) as well as those who claim that architecture’s real capacity lies in drawings and representations which remain uncontaminated by the compromises of construction (this he labels the “experimental” view).19 Indeed, some might argue that built architecture is always plagued with the limitations of time, cost, and gravity, which affect the built artifact but do not affect the architectural representations of it. Allen claims that the relationship between the two is what will reveal the capacity that architecture has to intervene productively in the world, but that it is a paradoxical and counterintuitive relationship: Paradoxically, the dry, unemotional form of notation, which makes no attempt to approach reality through resemblance, is better able to anticipate the complexity and unpredictability of the real.20 The distinction between allographic and autographic practices made by Goodman points to the paradoxical character of the relationship between drawing and building. I agree with Stan Allen’s contention that for the advancement of the profession there is a demand for drawings to be abstract and far removed from the complications of the real in order to have a productive and transformative effect on reality. I would also contend that drawings have an effect on reality whether it gets built or not. Indeed, as 126 Goodman says, to assume notation to be an instrumental aid to production is to miss the fundamental theoretical role of notation. 21 Similarly, to assume that drawing is an instrumental aid to the production of the built is to miss the fundamental theoretical role of drawings and their capacity to advance the practice of architecture. II.II Architecture as allographic If we take the looser definition and understanding of allographic and autographic, in that architectural drawings use shared conventions, then architecture does seem to have a “reasonably appropriate notational system” and can be said to be allographic. In addition, it shares the allographic quality of being able to be produced at a distance from the author. If architecture were an allographic artform, we should be comfortable claiming that every instance of certain drawings will produce the same building. However, it is difficult to disassociate buildings with a certain level of uniqueness and notion of authenticity. Using plans designed in one time period to build at a different time period seems to be problematic. If we imagine a developer taking the plans for the Empire State Building and rebuilding it exactly as it is in New York but say in Newark, we would most likely all agree that the authentic one is in New York. Similarly, all the replicas of famous buildings that we can find in Las Vegas are just that: replicas. This is because the history of production is critically important in the case of these buildings. The Eiffel Tower was significant because it used very novel technology of construction with iron; it defied what was thought to be possible, which is not the case of the replica made for the “Paris” hotel of Las Vegas. The recently completed redevelopment of the southern tip of Roosevelt Island is another example of this. It was completed using the plans that Louis Kahn had produced prior to his death in 1974. These plans were never used to build anything else, so this is a genuine instantiation of these plans. Nevertheless, it seems wrong to use them thirty years later, when the island and the surrounding city have developed into something very different from what they were at the time of the plans’ inception.22 Most works of architecture have a historic specificity, and a site specificity, that makes the history of production essential to their identification. They are not like music, which can be instantiated at different time periods without affecting the authenticity of the composition. In this sense they are unique and closer to an autographic artform. Indeed, it seems that the architectural works we would call autographic are precisely those buildings we regard as works of art. Building a bank with a floor plan, which is similar to that of the Pantheon, does not produce architecture as a work of art, just a crude replica. So, it is not a question of whether architecture is allographic when replicated, but whether architecture is considered an artistic practice. 23 127 No matter how notational the architectural drawings might be, the history of production, uniqueness, and authenticity is important in architecture understood as an artistic practice. Does this make architecture autographic? Or should we consider architecture as allographic when it is not built and exists just in its representation, but becomes autographic when built? Indeed, some have gone so far as to claim that architecture is allographic in the “plan stage” but autographic in the “built stage”. 24 While architectural drawings always have some contact with instrumentality, they are not merely a means for the built. It is the very notational quality of drawings—their abstraction and lack of resemblance to reality—that allows them to “work on reality from a distance”. 25 Architecture and pictorial practices In architecture, the development of perspective during the Renaissance emerged as a particular mode of representing architecture. Drawings built in perspective produce a knowledge that is different from paraline drawings such as axonometrics, which preserve the relationships that objects have to each other in a way that is measurable. In orthographic and paraline projection, perspective for example, physical properties of the object must be maintained, as they are, not as they appear to the naked eye; parallel lines in the object must be parallel in the drawing, for instance, even though they appear to the eye to meet at a point, so we may perceive distance. Indeed, one of the hardest things for students learning these drawing techniques is to not confuse what they see (perspective) with what paraline they know (orthographic or paraline) of the object. Perspective is the drawing technique that most closely resembles the way humans perceive: things that are further away appear to be smaller, and parallel lines in the world will appear to meet at a vanishing point in a perspectival representation. What we see is actually a distortion of reality that allows us to perceive distance; perspective is a distortion of reality. Perspective is not just a technique of drawing, it also puts the subject at the center of representation, which goes hand in hand with the shift of ideology that marked most of the artwork that was produced in the Renaissance period. Usually shown with the subject’s static eye at the center, and perspectival effects unfolding out of it. One could argue that perspective not only affected architectural representation, it also affected architectural production—a way of generating, thinking about, and imagining architecture. It is in this way that architectural representation is generative; it is able to produce new ways of imagining architecture and new realities. 26 orthographic II.III 128 In architectural drawings, perspective is used mostly for renderings which are most similar to pictorial representations. 27 Renderings aim to show how the building would appear once built; to show a building in its context, affected by environmental factors, the sun, wind, and by people moving in and around it. 28 They aim to give a glimpse into how the building might be experienced, and how the material selection might actually look. But while resemblance is important in renderings, the pursuit for realism in an architectural rendering is not uncontroversial. It certainly seems to be the aim behind renderings made for developers or real-estate companies where the goal is to make the look of the representation as realistic and as appealing as possible for commercial purposes. 29 However, the value of the highly realistic architectural rendering for the discipline itself is highly contested, especially in architectural education. The ability to produce highly realistic renderings is enabled by computeraided rendering techniques. Prior to the computer, renderings were done by hand using colored pencils and techniques at the disposal of the hand of the renderer; a skilled renderer could produce a more or less realistic depiction of the building in context, but these depictions would never be confused with the real building, in the way a computer-generated rendering might be confused with a photograph of the completed work. Indeed, prior to the computer, the notion of realism in a rendering was similar to the notion of realism in painting prior to photography; it was a goal for some artists, but rarely would we claim there to be an identical ontology between the representation and reality. There is a compelling parallel between what the invention of photography has done to painting with what the invention and use of the computer has done to architecture. This ties into the debate around mechanically reproduced artwork, and the observations made by Walter Benjamin and others on what mechanical reproduction, via photography and other means, has done to artforms such as painting. III Architecture in the age of digital (re)production Walter Benjamin’s pivotal text Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction aimed to question the effect mechanical reproducibility has on artforms themselves. His contention is that mechanical reproducibility, enabled by the invention of photography and film, caused a real crisis and breakage in traditional artforms, such as painting and sculpture. In architecture, a similar question has been in the air, ever since the computer was introduced as a means to produce and reproduce drawings. There is a belief that digital production is causing a crisis in architecture and the tradition of drawing. Thus, to summarize Benjamin’s main contention in a question: what is the effect of mechanically reproduced artwork on the artwork itself? In order to address a similar question: what is the effect of digitally produced architecture on the architecture that is produced? 129 III.I Architectural representation and photography In photography, the common-sense view is that the photograph reproduces what is out in the real world; the relationship between the representation and the object being represented is that of resemblance. We have seen how this is not the case for Nelson Goodman. However, in Languages of Art, he does not shed much light onto the specific case of photography. Other philosophers, such as Kendall Walton, have tackled photography more explicitly. While painting, drawing, and photography are all techniques for producing pictures, for some, photography cannot be thought of in the same way. Some philosophers, for example Kendall Walton, believe, photography is tied to “the enterprise of seeing” and that the advent of photography has given us a “new way of seeing”. Walton’s thesis is a bold one: for him, the viewer of a photograph literally sees the scene that has been photographed, stressing that we are to take him literally on this: I must warn against watering down this suggestion [...] I am not saying that photography supplements vision [...] Nor is my point that what we see—photographs—are duplicates or doubles or reproductions of objects. My claim is that we see, quite literally, our dead relatives themselves when we look at photographs of them. 30 This is Walton’s notion of transparency, which claims identical ontology of the photograph and object of representation in photography. This is a difficult yet compelling claim. In the context of painting, no one believes in the identical ontology of the painting and the thing the painting aims to represent, but in photography, Walton is not alone in such claims. This is why architectural renderings aim to look so realistic. It is not mere resemblance that these representations are after; they do not want to look the way the building might actually be in reality, rather they aim to look like a photograph of the building. This is often achieved by introducing visual effects that occur as a result of the physical interaction of light with the camera’s lens, such as the effect of lens flare. For professional photographers, this effect may be undesirable because it results from light being scattered, or flared, in a lens system and points to material imperfections in the lens. Sometimes the effects added to the rendering actually make it look more fantastical and dreamlike, hence less real, but if they emulate physical effects that happen in photography, they are desirable. It is not only because of the common assumption that photography is a faithful reproduction of reality, 130 but mostly because in looking like a photograph, rather than a realistic rendering, it is as if it were transparent, like a photograph in Walton’s account. If a rendering is sufficiently similar to a photograph, it will be as if we are looking at the real building. This is because we all know that images can be faked, but if something was photographed at some point that something existed. 31 Therefore, in a sense, a rendering will look more realistic not by virtue of how much it resembles the real thing to be constructed, but rather by how closely it provides the illusion of being a photograph of the real thing. In other words, photography elevates the status of an architectural representation that aims to emulate it, because appearing to be a photograph gives the rendering more validity, not by virtue of how realistic it looks but by of how much like a photograph it looks. An interesting case, which exemplifies this idea even further, is the series of images produced by visual artist Xavier Delory called “photography pilgrimage on modernity”. In this series, the artist manipulated photographs of famous buildings, or rather, famous photographs of known buildings, and transformed them in such a way as to make them look vandalized, completely run down, and dilapidated. This caused a curious commotion in the architecture community; many critics were outraged by the images. Even though it was known they were photoshopped images from existing photographs, they looked so much like the photograph of the building which resided in the collective memory that it was hard to disassociate the photograph from reality. The images were realistic in the sense that they resembled the original iconic photograph. It is almost as if those atrocities had happened to the building just by virtue of it being shown in a photographic-like image. Photographs will always depict something that exists or has existed, independently of how realistic or non-realistic it may be considered. While architecture and music come into the world, or get produced by their drawings or scores, a painting or a photograph enter into reality by having reality produce them. A score or a drawing are of something that may or may not come into reality. A photograph is always of something that at some point was in the world. 32 It is this relationship between photography and the world, which, at times, is of interest in architectural renderings, hence the wish to emulate the look of a photograph. This emulation was, of course, only possible after the invention of photography, and after the invention of computer-aided design software that made emulating a photograph possible. 131 III.II Drawing and building in the digital age Many critics and architects claim that the discipline is in crisis now that drawings are produced mostly aided by the computer. Increasingly, architecture gets thought through and produced directly by drawing in three dimensions, making the production of two-dimensional plans from the threedimensional model very immediate. So, the two-dimensional drawings that were so painstakingly slow to produce accurately by hand emerge as a result of a cut in a three-dimensionally built digital model. There is still work to be done to these cuts for them to read as plans, but in the eyes of many—architects and non-architects—this ability to produce drawings from a digital model is detrimental to the discipline and is putting architectural representation in crisis. In academia, there are increasing complaints regarding students not knowing how to draw plans and sections anymore, given the ubiquity and reliance on the computer. Another concern is generated by the ability to infinitely zoom into a digital model, in a way that was not possible in handdrawing with the limitations set by the paper’s surface and the thickness of the pencil’s lead. Digital drawings’ zoomable capacity has resulted in a loss of control of the sense of scale, distance, and size. In addition, modeling in perspective and a relatively quick ability to output perspectival renderings provide deceptive views of the object being represented. The use of the computer has certainly made the production of drawings faster and in some respects easier, and there has undoubtedly been some loss of traditional modes of drawing. It has paralleled what happened to painting with the invention of photography; it is just easier and much faster to capture details of texture, light, and shadow in a photograph than in painting. Therefore, rather than seeing it as a detrimental intrusion to the artform, the introduction of new forms of production (and reproduction) can be seen as opening new possibilities for the artform. Photography liberated painters from having to work so attentively on realism, or slave for hours over the detail of how a drop of water reflected the sun at a particular moment in time. It spearheaded the work of abstraction and experimentation that pushed the possibilities of painting as an artform in new directions, and produced new abstract ways of representing ideas. In the same way that photography liberated painting and allowed it to discover new directions, computer-aided drawing should be viewed as liberating to the architect, who is no longer bound to the drawing table with ink and vellum to produce precise drawings and representations. Although the production of these drawings is by no means obsolete, the computer has just permitted more exploration of the discipline’s representational capacities, much like photography has not made realism in painting obsolete. With each new technique that is discovered, new representational possibilities are uncovered too. This is also the case with the use of the computer. When digitally produced drawings are critiqued for using the 132 computer as a means for architectural representation at the expense of the art of drawing by hand, these critiques are often rooted in understanding the computer as a technique of representation and not of production of architectural thinking, both for the creator and the observer of the drawings. To claim that computer software allows us to think differently might seem an abomination to some, but if it enables new representational techniques, then new ways of seeing and thinking are enabled as well. Endnotes 1 Architecture is a discipline with a significant technical component but here, and in Goodman’s work, it is nonetheless understood as an artistic practice. 2 While Goodman coined this distinction as applied to artistic practices, he works off of the existing English terms of allograph and autograph; the former refers to a document written by someone other than those who signed it, the latter is the unique signature of one person. 3 To quote Goodman directly: “There are, indeed, compositions falsely purporting to be by Haydn as there are paintings falsely purporting to be by Rembrandt; but of the London Symphony, unlike the Lucretia, there can be no forgeries.” Languages of Art, p 112. 4 Goodman produces a theory of notation that differentiates types of artistic practices. Languages of Art, p 112. five different aspects that make a notation a notation, but for the purposes of discussing the mixed case of architectural representation and keeping the argument more focused we are not engaging in the elaboration of Goodman’s theory. 11 “Diagrams are flat and static models”. Goodman, Languages of Art, p 173. 12 In its broader sense, including models and other modes of representation. 13 Robin Evans, “Architectural Projection” found in Translations from Drawing to Building, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, p 21. There are exceptions, of course, such as with particular types of architectural intervention, such as design-build where the design and the building happen simultaneously. 14 This is most obviously seen in the case of music where works from different time periods can be performed. In architecture, a recent example is the redevelopment of the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in New York. 5 The case of dance for instance is interesting because there is no canonical form of notation, even though the finding of one has certainly been attempted (the best known being Labanotation invented by Rudolf Laban). But as it is an “ephemeral art” it fits into Goodman’s definition of allographic art. 16 Goodman, “How Buildings Mean” in Critical Inquiry, vol 11, no 4 (June 1985), p 642. 6 However, Goodman does not use the term “pictorial”, instead he refers to it as “sketch”. 17 This comparison can also be seen as illustrated in the diagram. 7 Goodman, Languages of Art, p 219. 18 These tools are not restricted to drawing, but encompass also text, not just in the form of specifications for the built (what Goodman refers to as “script”), but theoretical texts, and treatises. 8 Although he claims that differentiation and density are not opposites of each other, analog and digital are opposites. Goodman, Languages of Art, p 161. 9 “a system is analog if syntactically and semantically dense”. Ibid, p 160. 15 Importantly, Goodman defines what he means by notation through the five technical rules. 19 Stan Allen, Mapping the Unmappable, London: Routledge, 2003, p 31. 20 Ibid, p 33. 10 Goodman’s theory of notation is more elaborate than this statement; he identifies 21 Goodman, Languages of Art, p 128. 133 22 These plans do not recognize how Roosevelt Island has evolved in the past 30 years, or the asymmetries present on either shore. The symmetrical imposition culminates at the tip of the island with a concrete cube that inhibits the panoramic views available before, in an introverted gesture to commemorate the white male who already holds the island’s name. 23 Goodman is considering the differentiation between artistic practices. This kind of construct would not be classified as architecture understood as an artistic practice. It is something else, mere construction, possibly. 24 “that architecture may be allographic in its plan stage but autographic in its second, built stage.” Kirk Pillow, “Did Goodman’s Distinction Survive LeWitt?” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 61:4 (Fall 2003). 25 Allen, Mapping the Unmappable, p 40. 26 This is also what Stan Allen claims. 27 “The renderings made to convey the appearance of the finished building are sketches.” Goodman uses the term sketch to denote an architectural rendering, so I am keeping this assimilation here but they are different things: “a sketch is a drawing done in preparation for the final representation, while a rendering aims to render the scene in the same way as it would be rendered in real life, and it has a sense of finality to it that a sketch does not. [...] Realistic representation, in brief, depends not upon imitation or illusion or information but upon inculcation.” Goodman, Languages of Art, p 218. 28 For Goodman, since the mechanical reproducibility of a representation did not really have anything to do with its authenticity, as it did for Walter Benjamin, for now I am leaving aside whether the rendering was produced by hand or with the aid of computer software. Even though I do not think it is an unimportant distinction. 29 Which may actually make some realistic, unappealing elements not be shown. 30 Kendall Walton, “Depiction, Perception, and Imagination: Responses to Richard Wollheim” in Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts. Oxford University Press, pp 251–252. 31 Photographs can of course also be faked, and Walton is very aware of this too. But, in it being a photograph, there will always be aspects of it that once existed. 134 32 This does not mean that a photograph cannot be imbued with ideology and things that are ephemeral (beliefs), but it is a major difference between an architectural drawing and a photograph. Different notational systems, p 123. Internet images and plan by author. Diagram on allographic-architectureautographic works, p 124. Sketches by Ian Gordon. Bibliography Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center floor plan, p 126. Found on archdaily.com, March 13, 2011. Allen, Stan. Practice, Architecture, Technique and Representation. London: Routledge, 2003. Architectural projections systems, p 128. Francis Ching, Design and Drawing. Bazin, André. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” in What Is Cinema? Translated by Hugh Gray, vol 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967, pp 9–22. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Illuminations. New York: Schocken, 1968. Renderings of Dubrovnik housing project, p 130. By e+i studio, showing added lens flare effect. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and image by Xavier Delory, p 131. Found on designboom.com. D’cruz, Jason and P.D. Magnus. “Are Digital Images Allographic?” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 72:4 (Fall 2014), pp 417–427. Evans, Robin. Translation from Drawing to Building. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. Goodman, Nelson. “How Buildings Mean” in Critical Inquiry, vol 11, no 4 (June 1985), pp 642–653. Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1976. Goodman, Nelson. Of Mind and Other Matters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Gombrich, Ernst. Art and Illusion. London: Phaidon Press, 1960. Pillow, Kirk. “Did Goodman’s Distinction Survive LeWitt?” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 61:4 (Fall 2003), pp 365–380. Walton, Kendall. “Depiction, Perception, and Imagination: Responses to Richard Wollheim” in Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts. Oxford University Press, 2008, pp 143–156. Illustrations Analog and digital, p 122. Sketches by author. 135