Drawing Matters

Abstract

While ethnographic methods have been used in architecture for more than a century, Architectural Ethnography has recently gained momentum as a transdisciplinary approach to investigate the complexities of social-spatial phenomena. Architectural drawings play a key role in producing visual data in Architectural Ethnography and enable new modes of observation and documentation for recording inhabited places. As a tool for ethnographic research, drawing combines observation, interpretation, and transformation in a single gestural movement, leveraging the power of narratives and figurations and articulating the analytic and the projective in architectural research and design. in this chapter, we reflect on the implementation of drawing as a central element in the use of graphic anthropologies as a pedagogic method at the Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). We discuss how the use of ethnographic methods by architecture students opens possibilities to embed themselves within the environments under scrutiny, enable meaningful communication with the subjects of their research, and propel projective imaginations of future living scenarios. We argue that graphic anthropologies facilitate a nuanced understanding of needs, behaviours, and patterns, going beyond the familiar, objectivity, and the visible.