Learning by Representing. Architectural Drawing Between Visual Simulations and Graphic Abstractions

The paper presents the results of an approach, between research and education, applied in the last two years within the framework of the course of Techniques of Representation, and explores specifically the implementation of graphic synthesis through visual creativity, ranging from the analysis of architecture to its representation and the definition of a “logo”. In addition to the more conventional steps related to representation, the process involved a further level of synthesis that required capturing and representing the essence of a series of renowned Modernist architectures in the United States. This synthesis, in addition to stimulating the crucial exercise of analyzing the images and drawings found through the research phase, required an in-depth study of the great masters of Modern architecture, the cultural context and the compositional principles that generated those architectures. The contribution explores the diagrammatic dimension and the methods of graphitization, in the form of logos, of the conceptual features of each architecture analyzed, more than forty examples of graphic-conceptual representations that combine architectural analysis through images with graphic synthesis to which the “concepts” underlying Modernist architecture can be referred. A real process of “learning through images”, which become the basis for the achievement of knowledge and critical awareness in architectural representation.