The Hand that Draws the Future - Part 10 of 10 (at last!)

By way of concluding this series of mini-articles pertaining to the importance of drawing by hand, here in bullet form is a summary of the salient points raised in the previous 9 parts:

• Drawing by hand has been a core part of being human for thousands of years.
• The pedagogy of drawing by hand has been a foundational component of the training of architects for hundreds of years.
• While CAD has become (and will likely remain) indispensable, the discipline and significant benefits of drawing by hand might be at risk of being lost.
• The deep structures of the brain can be stimulated to enhance memory, learning and creativity.
• Drawing by hand results in high frequency brain activity within the limbic region of the brain, including the hippocampus, which enhances memory, learning and creativity, paving the way to envision new experiences and ideas that have not yet occurred.
• Creative activity to push thinking in new directions requires proactive engagement of the default network, including the hippocampus, using episodic specificity induction.
• Drawing by hand, seen as an episodic specificity induction method, could be an important bridge between what has been designed to what can or should be designed.
• Drawing by hand enhances brain activity, learning and memory. It is a cognitively complex process that activates parts of the brain associated with creative thinking and envisioning new ideas.
• The brain operates in two modes: L-mode and R-mode. Both are equally important, but R-mode has been neglected. Drawing activates R-mode, which unlocks powerful creative thinking.
• CAD is an indispensable tool but has limitations when it comes to design. As such, hybridization – the integration and combination of both analog and digital methods - is a powerful combination for any design practice.
• Travel or urban sketching is an effective (and super fun!) way to activate R-mode creativity and inspiration.
• Drawing by hand – especially during the ideation phase of projects - should be considered an indispensable tool for any designer involved in the solutions to future challenges. In other words, the hand that draws could very well be the hand that draws the future.

Having established the relevance of drawing by hand to the future of the built environment and lamenting its de-emphasis in design education is only one side of the coin of constructive opinion. The other side ought be more solution-oriented. To establish a baseline of sorts, I did some research into the current state of affairs of design education in America, and in particular, how and when analog visualization methods are emphasized in the required curriculum assigned to beginning design students.

Using lists from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and various college search websites, I reviewed the required curriculum, plan of study and course descriptions of 80 institutions offering B.Arch, BA Architecture, BS Architecture, BS Architectural Studies or 5-year M.Arch programs. (all the “top” schools from any list were included) All but a handful of programs required visualization courses only within the first year of study, most combining both analog and digital methods.

On average, design programs offered only 0.987 semester courses of required coursework with a focus on drawing, drafting or sketching. Some programs required a sequence of two, occasionally three, visualization courses, with the second (and third) emphasizing digital methods. Students were then expected to incorporate these short-learning-curve skills directly into design studio projects. Assuming the optimum scenario where students drew by hand for the entirety of the 0.987 semester courses requiring hand drawing, that would come to an average of about 3 months of actually board time.

With a maybe-not-so-equal emphasis placed on learning digital drawing software, the likelihood of students defaulting to using AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino or Sketchup for their presentations is high. I mean, how many of you design educators see analog presentation boards in first year, let alone second year studios? When my generation of designers were in school, we had to carry forward these analog presentation methods right through our undergrad capstone studios and even through graduate school. We spent a lot of time drawing then, which continued through many decades of architectural employment. Thousands and thousands of hours drawing. Think Malcom Gladwell from his 2008 book Outliers, that to be really good at something, “ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” Assuming the optimum scenario where students drew by hand for 8 hours a day for 90 days, that would come to only about 720 hours of actual board time.

So how do we reclaim the benefits of drawing by hand side-by-side with digital skills in a world with a bias towards the latter? Assuming it is unrealistic to add additional coursework to what appears to be packed and comprehensive curriculum in all the programs I reviewed, here are a few ideas, with the hope that others will arise from the ranks of the wise and fearless.

1. Pre-college drawing courses that offer college credit for high school students interested in pursuing architecture.
2. The requirement for all presentations to be hand-crafted for beginning design studios, with support from required all-analog visualization courses as well as drawing electives.
3. Online drawing intensives with letter-grade credit during summer and vacation breaks. I’ve tested this and, while nothing can replace studio culture, there is upside potential.

With that, I thank you for indulging my advocacy for the please-don’t-get-lost art of drawing by hand in a society that, in my opinion, desperately needs a return to craft as a way to being truly human. Your comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

ISC