re-draw.07: the line

Throughout history, designers have employed drawings as a fundamental tool for the communication of ideas and visions. Drawings were used as a means of rendering abstract concepts and engaging the wide public in a primordial effort of giving shape to one’s own thoughts. They were made to narrate concepts visually.

Within the context of the digital age, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer amount of visual data, a phenomenon which has forced us into a new relationship with visual content also within the realm of architecture. Renowned buildings are often photographed and then shared as a passive portrait of what architecture can look like.

The #architecture counts more than 100,000,000 posts uploaded by a global population of avid users for whom the term itself can mean anything from the context of their best brunch spot to the latest spectacular architectural artefact. Today architects are being asked to create instagrammable moments, eye-catching details used by the client as free advertising. The result is a media-oriented image of architecture, often portrayed online by various users from the same perspective, following trending aesthetics and styles. Within representation, what once used to be a moment of creation tends to become today a passive exercise of pure repetition.

Reflecting upon this paradigm, we encourage representation as a proactive exercise. We aim to engage a community in rediscovering a given building, an architectural icon, proactively researching a new image, a new way to portray it. To reach this purpose, Non Architecture, in co-curation with KooZA/rch and with the support of prominent architecture platforms, organizes Re-Draw.

THE LINE is the seventh building selected for the Re-Draw competition.