Eroding the foundation: Digitalization’s impact on architectural education

Abstract

In recent decades, drawing’s centuries-old centrality within architecture and landscape architecture has been largely co-opted by digitalization. While advantageous to companies for enhancing productivity and profitability, computerization has unfortunately been insalubrious within academia, undermining the teaching of philosophical and artistic dimensions. Its promises of convenience and speed have redirected student attention towards non-cerebral, production activities, marginalizing the intellectuality which is design pedagogy’s primary objective. Summarizing the origin and implications of this ‘revolution’, this article calls for a curricular reversion, positing that re-prioritizing drawing is vital for cultivating the capabilities which underpin the profession’s vitality and integrity, and manifest its essential spirit.