Closer to Things

Closer to Things: Drawing Practices as Spatial Research examines drawing as a critical research methodology in architecture and the spatial disciplines. Moving beyond drawing's conventional role as a prescriptive design tool, the publication addresses how drawing can be deployed as an analytical instrument to investigate, or get "closer to," urgent matters of concern in the existing built environment. Through this lens, drawing becomes a potent tool to reveal and communicate complex and often obscured spatial conditions of social inequality, economic asymmetries, environmental degradation or climatic crisis. This publication comprises an extended text by the authors interrogating different forms of research agency performed through drawing; a curated archive of relevant historical and contemporary drawings paired with theoretical reflections; and a series of new interviews and conversations on drawing's research agency with practitioners and researchers such as Momoyo Kaijima, Eyal Weizman, Fei Fei Zhou, Laura Kurgan, Huda Tayob and Denise Scott-Brown, amongst others. Relevant reading for researchers, practitioners and students alike, Closer to Things frames drawing not just as a creative act, but as a powerful tool of critical spatial inquiry. AUTHORS: Jesse LeCavalier is an urban designer and associate professor at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University where he directs the Master of Science in Advanced Urban Design program. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect, urban designer and assistant professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, EPFL Lausanne, where she leads the laboratory RIOT. Deane Simpson is an architect and professor of architecture, urbanism and planning at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen where he leads the masters program Urbanism and Societal Change. 300 illustrations