This fourth issue of The Draftery’s journal Figures will be about the aestheticization of drawings. But, this Figure is not about Aesthetics. It is about the seeming negativity that aestheticization implies; about the role that beauty plays as a property typ- ically assumed to be in opposition to use, function and verification.

We will touch only briefly on the complex mean- ing of Aesthetics and its historical background

as a field of study in its own right. The history of aesthetics is itself tangential to The Draftery’s consideration of architectural drawing; however, aestheticization has has taken a significant and im- plicit role in the discourse of architectural drawing. Aestheticization can serve as a mask obscuring the content of a drawing, or it can serve as a platform projecting the values of a drawing’s content. It can serve as the goal of a drawing process, or simply be the result. But of course, whatever our intentions, Aesthetics (and in turn aestheticization), as the the- ory explaining what happens when we perceive rep- resentations, is unavoidable. What do we mean when we say that a drawing has been aestheticized?

It is important to understand the difference between the popular usage of the word aesthet-ics and the philosophical concept to grasp what the significance of the phrase, “the aestheticization of drawing.” To talk about the aestheticization of ar- chitectural representation in the popular sense of the phrase would be to suggest that drawings can be made without critical intent, that drawings made simply to be appealing, or to align themselves with others of similar visual attributes are intrinsically in- ferior. Further, the popular sense of the phrase sug- gests that the use of an aesthetic is a tactic used to seduce viewers and to create paper-thin allegiances which help evade critical scrutiny by “looking right.”

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To be considered for Fig.04, please e-mail the following materials to 
[email protected] with the subject “Fig.04 Submission + [Name]”:

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2. Short biography (max. 250 words):
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3. Statement on how your drawings relate to this topic (max. 250 words):
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The deadline for all submissions is Sunday, September 14, 2014 at 11:59PM.

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