Digital Photographic Collage:: The New Alternative to Drawing in Basic Design Development?

The development of perspective drawing during the Renaissance was a watershed event in the history of architecture. Finally, architects were able to graphically represent three-dimensional ideas and objects on a two-dimensional picture plane through a systematic projection process. This development equipped architects with a new set of graphic representational tools, techniques, and methodologies which allowed them to better investigate and communicate spatial ideas to a wide audience. By the mid-1960's, architectural groups such as Ant Farm and Archigram, and individuals such as Peter Eisenmen became dissatisfied with these traditional modes of architectural representation that had dominated the profession since the Renaissance. They were interested instead with "pushing the limits in all media the notions of what architecture could be.”1 This experimental approach yielded early works by Archigram such as the "Instant City” scheme using photographic collage as a method of image creation. This and other proposals were theoretical, yet they inspired a successive generation of young architects to look beyond the traditional limits of architectural representation for new modes of creative problem solving