Learning and Unlearning Precedent

Representation and visual communication are integral to all facets of architecture, from conception to realization - as generator, as mediator, as symbol, and as an end unto itself. Visualization is a central method for selling architectural services, as well as a key product of those services. But in the media-saturated world that beginning students encounter, visualization skills pose inherent certain risks. This paper examines a visualization assignment situated in a digital skills lab in which a traditional precedent study is a device for teaching graphic communication, software techniques, and analytical methods. The author’s hypothesis is that introducing an exercise in image compositing provides an opportunity to consider multiple readings of the precedent being analyzed. The exercise suggests that through the reconsideration and recreation of architectural imagery, we can transcend the traditional view of these precedents by replacing images of perfection with the realistic imperfection of human experience and, by doing so, engage the complex endeavor of human inhabitation