Architectural Animality - drawings out for a walk

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND: The act of drawing is central to architecture. When exhibited, architectural drawings tend to be treated as either representations of a given building, or as artworks in themselves. This work did something different; it examined how drawings are part of the design process. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Architectural Animality - drawings out for a walk', was produced for an exhibition dedicated to an enquiry into the nature of the act of drawing. The work was a composition of multiple pieces, being constituted by 12 individual drawings/images/objects. The project explored how diverse ideas can become productively entangled through the drawings that take part in the design process. Working with an architectural project still in early stages of design development, the many influences and ideas at play led to thinking about that stage of design development as somewhat 'wild' - like a complex ecosystem of interdependent but as-yet-unclear relations. This project tested how the process of composing this complex ecosystem into an exhibition assemblage could become a meaningful part of the design process. As such, this was not an exhibition of either a process or a finished product, but rather an experiment in folding the process of exhibiting into the design process. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: This work was an invited commission by curators, Leonie Matthews (architect and educator), and Amanda Alderson (art curator). This exhibition bought together local and national artists and architects to create and present original works that explored drawing. The Mundarin Arts Centre, set up in 1979, is funded by the West Australian Government via the Department of Arts and Culture and the Shire of Mundaring. This exhibition was also supported by the Australian Institute of Architects. A small fee accompanied the commission, in addition to airfares to install the work in Western Australia and speak on an associated panel.