School Notes: School of Architecture
January/February 2012

Symposium considers the future of drawing

Distinguished architects, historians, theorists, and educators from multiple disciplines will convene at the Yale School of Architecture in February to explore the historic role of architectural drawing and illuminate the challenges faced by drawing in architectural practice today. Since the early Renaissance, the defining act of architecture has been the production of drawings, which help depict form, space, material, and structure, and at the same time offer designers the potential for control and authorship of the design process. But the proliferation of digital tools in recent years has wholly altered the historic role of drawing. “Is Drawing Dead?” will address the current and future role of drawing in the field of architecture.

Visual representation in architecture

The spring exhibition at the Architecture Gallery is the first US retrospective of the work of Massimo Scolari since 1976. In Scolari’s artistic universe, the built project and its images are equal participants in the adventure of representation. Some 50 paintings of architectural and urban subjects, chiefly watercolors and oils showing abandoned cities in stark natural and industrial landscapes, along with a monumental urban sculpture created for the 1991 Venice Biennale—replicated to scale for this showing—illustrate the ongoing exchange between architecture and other modes of visual representation that is central to Scolari’s work. “Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture, 1967–2012” will remain on view until May 4.