The Auckland Drawing School. On the margins of architectural representation

Abstract

In the early 1980s, the School of Architecture of Auckland already known as “Drawing School” was operating on the far fringes of architectural debate and was experiencing the theoretical turn in the context of its teachings. One of the most influential theories on the possibilities of deconstruction of architectural discourse travelled with great success between the two hemispheres, shortly after Mark Wigley left the school upon completing his doctoral studies on the subject. What remains unnoticed, however, is the complicity between the affirmation of that theoretical thought and the well-established tradition of the school in the field of representation. Starting from an axonometric composition produced in those years, this contribution aims to examine the tense relationship between drawing as mental and material space, by revealing the unexpected possibilities of insinuating a real counter-argument within the same theoretical apparatus from which that composition seemed to derive.

Keywords

• new zealand auckland school
• disegno assonometrico
• teoria dell’architettura
• decostruzione
• 1980s