Thoughts of an Architect

Another manifesto...

1 That architectural tracings are apparitions, outlines, figments.
They are not diagrams but ghosts.

2 Tracings are similar to X-rays, they penetrate internally.

3 Erasures imply former existences.

4 Drawings and tracings are like the hands of the Blind touching the surfaces of the face in order to understand a sense of volume, depth and penetration.

5 The lead of an architect’s pencil disappears (drawn away) metamorphoses.

To take a site: present tracings, outlines, figments, apparitions, X-rays of thought. Mediations on the sense of erasures. To fabricate a construction of time.

To draw out by compacting in. To flood (liquid densification) the place-site with missing letters and disappeared signatures. To gelatinize forgetfulness.

John Hejduk, Thoughts of an Architect, 1986. In Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture.