In a Room Together

Abstract

At first glance, Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation asks visitors to understand that a game is afoot. Arrayed along the gallery walls are a series of square-framed black and white images, equally dimensioned and spaced evenly. Despite their cohesiveness, the pieces themselves demonstrate a remarkable diversity that produces a constant flicker between the exhibition’s individual parts and its larger whole. The expansive range of works packed within the tightly curated format is a first clue to the layered ambitions of the exhibition, and the extent to which an exhibition about computation in architectural representation is itself curated as if it were an algorithm (Figure 1). Organized by Andrew Kudless and Adam Marcus, who are both Associate Professors at the California College of the Arts (CCA), the second volume of Drawing Codes was introduced at The Cooper Union running from January 29th to February 28th, 2019. Following up on the first edition (which debuted in 2017 at the CCA), the show explores the ways in which emerging technologies inform and influence the practices of architectural representation today. This central theme emerges from the curators’ frustration that the introduction of technologies during the “digital turn” in architecture of the late 90s and throughout the aughts spawned an aesthetic that pervaded the field and reduced computation to a set of tropes that have since overstayed their welcome. In reaction, the exhibition challenges the notion of a unifying stylistic ambition, instead emphasizing computation as a lens through which to register the plurality of voices present in the design field today. In te rio rs D O I: 10 .1 08 0/ 20 41 91 12 .2 01 9. 16 26 59 2