WRITING-DRAWING An Entangled Archival Practice

Abstract

Abstract This article is based on a 2016 talk I gave to a drawing research group led by Lesley McFadyen, Huda Tayob and Sophie Read. In it I look back at my PhD research completed in 2013, with a view to trying to disentangle my complicated relationship with drawing as a practice of architectural research. Working through what drawing might and might not be, I propose that, hand in hand with writing, writing-drawing forms an entangled mode of doing architectural history and theory that draws out something more, or other, than each can do alone.* The mode of writing-drawing is particularly developed in the context of historical research on a building where archival material on the architect’s intent, or evidence of the uses of the building once it was built, are missing. I argue two things: firstly, that the building itself can be read as an original archive, as a series of Lacanian part-objects; and that secondly, the writing-drawing research practice creates a further archive, a »living archive« that can be contributed to over time.† The article reflects on the roles of writing and drawing in the PhD whilst incorporating thinking developed in my recent research, chiefly drawn from ethnography, sociology, literary studies, and situated feminist and autotheory writing.