Research Fellow Program Tools of Drafting

Like the French projeter or the English to project, the German verb entwerfen– meaning “to draft” or “to design”– derives from a quick movement of tossing something away: a gesture of distancing and loss of control. This gesture is oriented by a particular purpose or aim, but is by no means determined by the latter. Whoever drafts a project attempts to give form to the unknown or unthought: He or she lays down a graphical or, in the case of a model, a three-dimensional bridge to nothingness. In modern linguistic usage, almost any practice that comes into play when works of art, architectural structures, machines, musical compositions or texts are being planned can be called “drafting”. The horizon of meaning ranges from sketching, modeling and composing to planning, conceiving and constructing. The means employed in this sign and desk adventure are as diverse as they are heterogeneous: From pencil to CAD program, from graph paper to 3D printer, the most varied media and tools could and can be made serviceable for drafting.

The projects of the Research Fellow Program, on the one hand, dealt with the history and theory of these tools of drafting and, on the other, investigated the modes of drafting action: hence, the procedures that are developed in using the instruments and models. They thus deepened our understanding of one of the core focal points of IKKM research: the question of the power to act of non-human agents. By looking at the history and theory of drafting, the Research Fellow Program attempted to highlight the exteriority of shaping, forming and thinking in both methodical and thematic fashion: both with respect to the concept of the tool, which was subject to critical revision from the standpoint of recent studies of cultural technology and of science, and with respect to the concept of drafting as a practice that characterizes and supports the modern artist, architect, engineer, and scientist. From this perspective, drafting appears not as one activity among others, but rather as specific modern modus operandi, which precedes the concept of the discovering, investigating, creative, future-oriented subject as its precondition.

Participants

Members of the Research Fellow Program and their Projects

Eva Maria Froschauer

On Collecting and Designing

Stefanie Klamm

Archaeological Models as Experimental Tools

Ana Ofak

Agents of New Form.
Visual Media and Drafting Practices of the Art Group EXAT51

Ulrich Richtmeyer

Wittgenstein’s “Philosophy of the Working Drawing“

Susanne Schregel

Crossing Frontiers – Interdisciplinarity and the Spatial Layout of Science

Nicole Stöcklmayr

Models of Phenomena. Parametric Design in Architecture

Franziska Uhlig

About Tools

Barbara Wittmann

What’s Left of Drawing. Case Studies on Graphic Drafting in the Present

Associated Members of the Program

Nathalie Bredella

Techniken des Entwerfens. Werkzeuge und Medien in Entwurfsprozessen von Frank O. Gehry Associates

Gert Hasenhütl

Erkenntnistheoretische Aspekte von Entwurfsprozessen

Peter Heinrich Jahn

Imitatio & disegno geometrico. Inventionsbegriff und Planungsprozeß des römischen Architekten Carlo Fontana (1638-1714) und seiner Schule

Lutz Robbers

Verkörperung/Verzeitlichung: Der Einbruch des bewegten Bildes in die Architektur

Wladimir Velminski

Entwürfe des Neuen des Denkens