By Farshid Moussavi
In Fall 2024, the Druker Design Gallery will host an exhibition of drawings used to coordinate the construction process, that is, drawings that reflect the nature of architecture as an “instruction-based” art.
Construction coordination drawings differ from the sketches, perspectives, diagrams, maquettes, and other images that architects use to convey their ideas for a building. Unlike the painter or the sculptor, the architect’s final act results not in a completed work of art but in a set of instructions that enable the work of art to be realized. In this sense, an architect’s work is closer to that of a conceptual artist.
These instructions are then implemented on a site that is usually exposed to the elements and to the dynamics of often several years that it takes for the many specialist builders, roofers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and decorators to complete the building. Meanwhile, the architect remains both legally and morally accountable for all that follows from or is attached to his or her instructions.
This event, moderated by Farshid Moussavi, will feature presentations by several practices whose drawings appear in the exhibition. In brief remarks, the designers will reflect on the drawings and the complex processes they represent.
Curator:
Farshid Moussavi is Professor in Practice in the Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). In 2015, she was elected a Royal Academician. She trained at Harvard GSD, the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, and Dundee University. She was previously co-founder and co-principal of the London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA), recognized as one of the world’s most creative design firms, integrating architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture in a wide range of projects internationally. Prior to this, she worked with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genoa and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam. Recognized as an outstanding and committed teacher who brings intellectual rigor to the discourse on architecture, she has been a visiting professor at UCLA, Columbia, Princeton, and several architecture schools in Europe; she was also the Kenzo Tange Visiting Design Critic at the GSD in Spring 2005. She taught for eight years at the Architectural Association in London and was the head of the Institute of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she taught from 2002 until 2005.
Moussavi is a columnist for The Architectural Review and author of The Function of Ornament (2006), The Function of Form (2009), and The Function of Style (2015), the latter of which is based on her research and teaching at Harvard.
Presenters:
Iñaki Ábalos, Abalos+Sentkiewicz AS+
Angela Pang, PangArchitect
Sean Canty, Studio Sean Canty
Philip Schmerbeck, Herzog de Meuron
Toyo Ito, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot, BRUTHER
Christian Kerez
Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects