'In-between': Architectural drawing as interdisciplinary spatial discourse

© 2015 RIBA Enterprises. This essay discusses the role of non-normative architectural representational practices in architectural design-based research. From a reading of Michel Foucault's concept of discursive formations, it sets out an inter-disciplinary practice-based design research approach to architectural drawing. It considers architectural research to be connected to the conception that drawing and the critical discourse of space are indissoluble and that the confines of each are products of specific ideological and disciplinary practices. Conventional, orthographic architectural drawings are challenged through in-between drawings inspired by inter-disciplinary drawing methods. The site of exploration is the pedagogical context of the design studio. Two different bodies of student architectural design research drawings are discussed. One set is of digitally produced collages that examine island colonisation and that incorporate drawing methods used in geology and archaeology. The other set comprises hand-made collage drawings that visually incorporate the qualities of home typically excluded from architectural drawing and which reference social and anthropological readings of the space. The essay aims to propose alternative modes of practice through drawing in-between disciplinary conventions