Drawing Codes Book Launch

Emerging technologies of design and production have transformed the role of drawings within the contemporary design process from that of design generators to design products. As architectural design has shifted from an analog drawing-based paradigm to that of a computational model-based paradigm, the agency of drawing as a critical and important form of design representation has shifted. Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation examines the effects of this transformation on the architectural discipline and explores how architects have critically integrated procedural thinking into their drawing process.

This event, marking the launch of the Drawing Codes book, will discuss the premise of the project and focus on the role of computation in the pedagogy of architectural drawing. Book authors Adam Marcus and Andrew Kudless will be joined by contributors Liz Gálvez, Thom Faulders, Zeina Koreitem, and Heather Roberge to present their contributions to the book and participate in a conversation about how computation has both transformed and also revitalized architectural representation.

Adam Marcus directs Variable Projects, an award-winning design and research studio that operates at the intersection of architecture, computation, and fabrication. He is also a partner in Futures North, a public art collaborative dedicated to exploring the aesthetics of data. His work develops critical approaches to design computation, digital fabrication, and robotics, often exploring how these technologies can open up new modes of ecological, material, and public engagement.

Adam is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Tulane University School of Architecture, where he serves as the Research Director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism and leads design studios and courses in computational design and digital fabrication, with a focus on bridging these technologies with ecological performance. He previously taught for ten years at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he co-founded the Architectural Ecologies Lab. From 2011 to 2013, he was the Cass Gilbert Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture, and he has also taught at Columbia University, Barnard College, and the Architectural Association's Visiting School Los Angeles.

Andrew Kudless is a designer based in Houston, Texas where he is the Bill D. Kendall Professor at the University of Houston’s Hines College of Architecture & Design as well as the Director of the Construction Robotics and Fabrication Technologies Lab (CRAFT Lab). In 2004, he founded Matsys, a design studio that pursues a trans-disciplinary and trans-scalar practice that blends art, design, architecture, and engineering. He holds a Master of Arts in Emergent Technologies and Design from the Architectural Association and a Master of Architecture from Tulane University. Kudless was a Fulbright Fellow in Kyoto, Japan. Matsys is the recipient of several awards including the 2019 AIA Honor Award for Architecture and a AIA Top Ten COTE Award in 2023, both for Confluence Park with Lake|Flato Architects. The work of Matsys has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France. In 2019, Kudless became the first American designer to contribute to Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades furniture collection.

Host or Publisher California College of the Arts