Arch-Acrobatics
MA - Representation, 2017
  • Architectural Diagrams
  • Cologne
  • Graphic Design
  • Master

There are multiple understandings of diagrams and their uses in architecture. The overarching purpose of any architectural drawing is to act as a ‚visual language‘ – a medium between thoughts and reality. Or as the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan puts it: “The medium is the message”. Thereby, McLuhan places the form of presentation above its content. In the visual language of architecture, diagrams are the ‚dot points‘ compared to the prose of detailed drawings and renders. The course discusses a framework of different types of diagrams and introduces a tool set for the strategic and operative application within the architectural design and communication process.

Against this background the one-week seminar aimed to complement existing discourse on architectural diagrams so that a general understanding could be reached through critique and comparison as well as through the own application. The critical examination and presentation of one’s own design process was given priority, by clearly showing the connection between design and presentation with a diagrammatic depiction. Diagrams were deployed at different levels of the design process – from first analysis and conceptual approach, the derivation of ideas and decision-making from initial conceptual design through to processing and final presentation of the project.


CREDITS

Julia Alhalabi, Lucas David Dyrda, Julian Lanser, Matthias Monka, Katharina Wirtz

Anke Tiggemann, Markus Tiggemann, Marco Hemmerling
Faculty of Architecture, Cologne University of Applied Sciences