I taught the course of Architectural Drawing during the academic years 2012 – 2013 and 2014 – 2015, during which I compiled exercises borrowed from different sources and, following Ching’s (1999) structure, I created a booklet of exercises (Figure 2). The booklet, like the course, was divided into two sections. The first section was dedicated to exercises related to the basics of drawing. In the second part, I introduced architectural projects that dealt with social injustice or environmental issues but that were also geometrically simple to comprehend and apply all techniques learned earlier. For example, to practice axonometric drawings, I included one of the six Soe Ker Tie Houses built for the orphans of the conflict in Myanmar in the small town of Noh Bo; to practice perspective in two- and three-vanishing points, I used the PlattenPalast, a small construction in Berlin that uses reclaimed materials from a plattenbau post-war construction and the windows from the Palast der Berliner Republik.
As part of the course, I organized an activity with students to play in one of the public squares at the university. The activity was related to the topic of ‘line and form’ where we learned to create familiar forms out of a limited number of abstract figures through a Tangram. In groups, students created 1m x 1m Tangrams, positioned them in the open square, and invited passers-by to join the activity (Figure 1). I also created a video to document this activity.
dalia milián bernal 