The project explains a method of teaching basic drawing to students of architecture by working through visual geometric problems founded in handwriting. Its significance is in connecting the apprehension of architectural space to a habitual, intuitive and highly kinesthetic action, the making of letter form shapes. The transformation of these forms in practice enables the student to communicate three dimensional spatial ideas on paper.

The instructional drawings and video-recordings that result from this inquiry may later be viewed by foundation drawing instructors and students and replicated at their own pace.

Since it is centered familiar processes, namely handwriting it is universally accessible to anyone who is interested in learning to draw, whether or not they have previous experience in hand-drawing.

The researcher has found that connecting to the motor sense that governs the production of letter forms has proven in the classroom to be surprisingly effective in cultivating the ability to communicate space by drawing.

I have literally hundreds of these, though many need re-drawing.

The “Bicycle Problem” requires a student to understand a bicycle in terms of its wheel diameters, and usually takes a full 2 classes to resolve.  This excercise is directly derivative of Albers’ description of the projection of circles inscribed in squares and the residual “spandrel” spaces that result between these shapes. (Albers, Josef, Search Versus Re-Search, Trinity College Press, 1969. p. 30)

Some of these exercises were formalized into captions for an exhibit of student work when I taught Advanced Drawing for Architects at the Wentworth Institute of Technology.

New in 2018