“Work with your hands, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”
-1 Thess. 4:11-12
What can happen when young minds are challenged to be still and rely on their imaginations? Timothy Christian Murphy describes the journey leading a summer course in 2023 for Arts University Bournemouth, UK in the following article that appeared on the Architectural platform Drawing Matter.
All architecture begins with our hands by making physical what we understand to communicate the invisible to the outside world.
The translation of an idea that takes place in working through a model, sketch or drawing is the primary iteration, the source of the purest design intention. This phenomenon is revealed in the making process. It is the link between the active thoughts at the forefront of our minds combined with the influences of the periphery and the past of the subconscious that manifest itself in the using of our hands to convey an idea. In this way, drawing and physical making unlocks the true qualities of uniqueness in every person’s approach to design because it is a synthesis of ingredients that are intrinsic to the creation and is not able to be replicated by anyone else or anything, human or otherwise.
It’s this production of hand drawing and making that was the main task set before the students during the 2023 Arts University Bournemouth Summer Architecture Course. The goal was twofold: First, to test the assumption that the physical making process draws out each student’s personal journey and qualities to create a truly unique piece of work in response to the same rigid guidelines of the given drawing exercise. Secondly, to promote introspection and reflection on experiences students had during the course during via forced extensive hours of sketching, drafting, and modelmaking of a singular piece of work. To achieve this the schedule set for the course was both rigorous and simple. For two weeks students would spend one eight-hour day devoted to a desk intently working on the same drawing or model, and one eight-hour day completely free of any outcome or task spent on a trip in the landscape. Sometimes the trip was architecturally focused and sometimes it was not.
With students aged only 15-17 years, and most with little to no architectural experience or exposure, the impressive results of their work are displayed here with diverse and mature quality.
Scaled detail drawings were beautifully executed with varying use of color coding, live weights, and sheet sizes, while folded paper models expressed a strong statement of intent at 1:100 scale when connecting with the site model of the Bournemouth Coastline. The execution of the intentional moves combined with the unintentional smudges, paper cuts, and errors resulted in works that palpably contained a piece of each student’s personality.
However, perhaps the most interesting outcome of the summer course was observing the extensive amounts of time each student willfully spent committing to their work with minimal encouragement from the instructors. I was initially anxious about tasking the students with long and laborious manual exercises, especially in a world that encourages an ever-decreasing attention span, but that uneasy feeling was put to rest as the sessions progressed. Over the next two weeks, the upfront hours of seemingly monotonous drafting and making began to give way to the outcome we had sought to achieve. Through their perseverance in creating there was a point reached in each student’s journey when they began to recognize the high quality of what they were capable of achieving. We pleasantly discovered that challenging students to still themselves and focus on the task at hand forced them to rely on their imagination for inspiration and not stimulation. It’s just surprising to think that sitting at a desk using traditional tools would be the catalyst for students unlocking their previously unknown design aspirations and proving their abilities to themselves.
The main thought I keep coming back to after running this summer’s course is the reinforcement of an idea that architectural design through primary physical drawing and making is a proven and effective methodology of communication that produces result that stand outside of a person’s age, experience in the field, time they live in. My hope is that these students can take this idea and go forward into any architectural situation, academic or professional and use their hands so that they will not be dependent on anyone while designing from a place of confidence that is independent of everyone.
To see the full article and the drawings the students ended up doing, click here.