BACKGROUND This essay and body of drawings was selected for publication by a distinguished panel in a worldwide essay competition, the Drawing Matter Writing Prize, run by the Drawing Matter Archive: one of the world’s foremost repositories of architectural drawings and new and historical writing. The essay was submitted to the Autograph category, and reflects upon my own, original drawings. It offers a unique response to the competition callout, which invites participants to carefully look at drawings and to consider what they reveal about the process of design, and the buildings or objects they represent.
CONTRIBUTION My essay was selected for both its visual content (the original drawings) and verbal content (the essay that elucidates the work). In addressing Drawing Matter’s provocation, of “drawing” being both verb and noun, I offered a novel exploration of the term’s meaning, as well as a description of drawing as an embodied act—a growing area of research across art, psychology, and neuroscience. The work was novel for its origin in Covid conditions, entailing trans-continental collaboration. The essay offers a unique and firsthand point of view of the practice of drawing, it reflects on critical, theoretical texts, and it discusses my mixed media approach to working with the emergent technology of point cloud scanning. In concert, these attributes were considered relevant to a broad readership, the judges citing the work as very engaging and well-written.
SIGNIFICANCE The Drawing Matter Writing Prize is an international competition that facilitates publication on their website and related media. The judging panel is comprised of professors from the renowned school of architecture, the Bartlett School at UC London, as well as the editorial team at the Drawing Matter archive. Their Instagram has close to 30,000 followers. My essay was one of only two published in its category. This selection is a high honour and a career highlight in terms of presence on a world-stage.