Venerdì 9 dicembre, alle ore 11.00, presso l’Aula A24 del Polo A della Scuola di Ingegneria, avrà luogo la lezione di Pippo Ciorra dal titolo “Iconophobia. Architecture and the politics of representation”.
L’evento si svolge nell’ambito dei corsi di Ingegneria Edile-Architettura e di Storia dell’Arte dell’Università di Pisa.
Abstract
On February 9, 2011, the Yale School of Architecture (YSOA) hosted a symposium titled “Is Drawing Dead?”. Organized by Victor Argan, the event featured a number of renowned speakers, including Massimo Scolari, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Peter Cook. It was accompanied by the exhibition “Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture”, whose contents served as a bold statement and a clear negative response to the symposium’s provocative title.
However, the defense of traditional drawing offered by the speakers, alongside the artistic aura of Scolari’s work, seemed insufficient to ease the concerns of Yale’s faculty.
Seven years later, in February 2018, the same institution hosted another exhibition, “The Drawing Show” curated by Dora Epstein Jones and previously displayed at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles. This exhibition revisited many of the unresolved arguments left in the wake of the 2011 symposium. “We now find ourselves,” said Dean Deborah Berke in her opening statement, “entering a new phase of representation as the fear of losing authorship, identity, and control to the computer subsides.” Epstein Jones joined the conversation, passionately observing: “The practice of architectural drawing has changed dramatically over the past twenty-five years. The traditional pro forma of the sketch (or parti) that would eventually lead to a plan, section, and elevation has given way to exploratory forms of representation.”
This growing concern over the evolution of architectural drawing gained further momentum in 2014, when David Sheer, a practicing architect and Yale graduate, published “The Death of Drawing”. The book contributed to the ongoing discourse on the state of drawing and the implications of advanced digital tools. At the same time, another Yale faculty member, Mario Carpo, entered the debate from a less critical and more exploratory perspective, publishing “The Second Digital Turn” in 2017. Carpo’s work examined many of the same issues as Sheer but with a more nuanced curiosity about the potential of the “digital revolution”, seen from the point of view of a scholar of architecture theory and criticism.
The Yale sequence of events is just one among many platforms where the role of drawing in the digital age is being critically examined. Even considering the specific school’s relatively “conservative” approach to architectural design/drawing, it is clear that the issue remains pivotal. It will inevitably shape the future of architectural representation, underscoring the need for further research and investigation.
Pippo Ciorra è architetto, critico, docente, senior curator per il Museo Maxxi di Roma. Laureato in Architettura alla Sapienza Università di Roma nel 1982, consegue un dottorato di ricerca presso lo IUAV di Venezia nel 1991. Dal 1982 al 1995 ha svolto attività didattica presso le facoltà di Venezia e di Roma. Dal 1995 insegna Composizione Architettonica alla Facoltà di Architettura di Ascoli Piceno, Università di Camerino.
È Professore di “Progettazione e teoria” presso la SAAD di Ascoli Piceno e Direttore del dottorato di ricerca internazionale Villard d’Honnecour presso lo IUAV di Venezia.
