TRANSPARENT TIME

Time is what roots us in our humanity.  Architecture controls and modulates the sequence of experience.  To have a sequence, time must elapse.

Humans have a fundamental need to understand their place in time.  We derive great satisfaction in contributing to human actions that will exceed our lifetimes.  Architecture has a fundamental task of giving a shape and a sequence to a segment of limitless space.

The goal of architecture is to create a context in which we can express our humanity.  And our humanity cannot be understood without time.

There is more time in a transparent drawing than there is in a representational drawing.  The comprehension and resolution of complete objects implies a complete understanding of time.

Individual, representational drawings have the least amount of time.  A drawing with a single viewpoint implies a frozen time.  A drawing with opaque surfaces mandates that time is frozen.  Yet that same projection, drawn transparently, suddenly re-introduces time.

We don’t talk about the amount of time that a drawing includes.  We are not taught to think about how time defines the understanding of a drawing.

So the moral of the story here is to draw with as much time as you can.  Put the bodily concept of time into your drawings.  The more time that a drawing contains, the more transparent it is.