Category: Drawing

  • Rituals of Place: Measure and Meaning in Ephemeral Landscapes

    Carley Rynar, Bradley Walters, and Adeline Hofer When we engage the physical world outside the studio, site and landscape become more than passive tableaus or inert media within which we operate. The lands within which we work are, in fact, complex and nuanced fields marked by overlapping and competing systems. When we consider the human condition within these natural…

  • Vicenza 3.0: Imparando dal Passato International Exhibition of Student Work

    Working with Giancarlo Busato and Sotirios Papadopoulos, Bradley Walters co-curated an international exhibition of work prepared by students from the University of Florida School of Architecture. The exhibition included prints and engravings prepared by students in the Vicenza Institute of Architecture study abroad program in Vicenza, Italy. Citation:Walters, Bradley, Giancarlo Busato, and Sotirios Papadopoulos. 2016.…

  • Here be Dragons: On the Value of Incompleteness in Drawing

    As a warning to unwary seafarers, the Lenox Globe (ca. 1503-07) included the following cautionary inscription on the eastern coast of Asia: “HC SVNT DRACONES” (hic sunt dracones). The Latin phrase offers an ominous warning, translated directly as “here be dragons” (1, 2). For some, this alludes to the presence of mythological figures lurking unseen,…

  • Urban Seams and Sutures: Strategies for Intervening in Pre-Industrial Urban Landscapes

    The urban condition has become “a space of spontaneous self-organization and emergence, it is inherently dynamic, connected, interactive, a messy assemblage of networks, systems, ecologies, all competing with and contaminating, each other” (Furján 2008, 52).  While these conditions and phenomena are experienced by many, they pose particularly acute problems for those in the design fields…

  • Detours and Denouements

    Architectural education is challenged by the pressing needs of a changing profession. With increasing costs and diminishing fees, firms deploy digital tools and/or outsource work to more efficiently deliver design services. Schools are similarly streamlining processes, responding to charged professional and political environments. With constrained funding, curricula at many schools are being abridged, shifting programs…

  • Sketch: An Exhibition of Speculative Drawings at Lincoln Center’s Center Gallery, NYC

    Sponsored by the Fordham University School of Visual Arts in association with New York-based curators d3, the Sketch exhibition for 2013 seeks to investigate the possibilities of drawing by embracing the full range and potential of sketching in conceptual design. Individual work by Bradley Walters as well the work of nine of his students was…

  • Drawing Space

    To say that the drawing has been displaced by building may be all too self-evident, both in practice and in academia. It is interesting that the displacement has been caused in part by the success of architectural drawings, drawings that evolved from two-dimensional ideas to three-dimensional models to photorealistic renders to full-motion video. The drawing…

  • Figures and Fields

    Univerza v Ljubljani Fakulteta za Arhitekturo │Plečnikova Predavalnica | Ljubljana, Slovenia | 29 March 2012 This lecture weaves together professional work, research, and student work within a narrative that engages space, field theories, surface, landscape, environment, and ecology. Image: Lecture poster. Poster background image: Mapping of bee movements, responding to specific environmental conditions. Student work from Architectural Design…

  • Active Lines: Liminal Marks + Material Constructions

    The planning and development of large-scale projects requires investors to commit significant capital resources to their realization. These commitments are made based on the promise of a return, whether it is in the form of financial gain, an icon in one’s name, or both. The promises are materialized in words, numbers, and in visual documents:…

  • Out of Thin Air

    We cannot expect to extract ideas and schemes from the student without first feeding his mind and imagination. Bernhard Hoesli and Colin Rowe, 1954 (1) As informational networks bind us ever more tightly together, they also introduce unseen gaps and fissures within fields of knowledge. While in some cases, these are the product of distraction…

  • Instrumental Lines and Productive Paths

    The territories of contemporary cultural production are marked by those at the extremes. On the one hand, we find a sustained fascination with celebrity and stardom; on the other is an enduring pursuit of the commonplace and/or normative. While seeking the extraordinary, it is often the anonymity of the everyday—the automobile, big-box retailer, or matching…

  • Knots and Nurbs: Relational Spaces in Variable Fields

    Legibility of constructed space is largely based on relationships internal to a work, relationships that can be read or understood through the terms of the construct itself. Components are set in relation to one another, marking purpose and intent, shaping space through their interactions within a field. It is through numerous iterations, constant study and…

  • Powder Puffed Faux Fat & Safe Sex

    Following completion of my undergraduate studies in architecture at the University of Florida and work in practice, I prepared a portfolio of work to accompany applications for graduate studies. This document, compiled in January 1997, was titled “Powder Puffed Faux Fat & Safe Sex.” The document included an introductory preface, included here to provide additional…