Liquid Lines: Synthesizing Perception and Precision

Abstract

For the designer, imagination travels in the line. Lines can redraw the present, defy conventions, recast new orders and shape the future. Lines establish territorial boundaries, communicate written language and construction intentions yet lines are also fluid. When experienced in the world, lines can be ephemeral and dynamic and inspire a methodological interplay between perception and precision. In this regard, lines are liquid. Conversely, when liquid is represented through the act of drawing lines, a similarly incomplete view is formed. It is within these gaps between time and matter or certainty and precision, that lines can reveal opportunities for design. By slipping into a mindset that crosses, tests, traces and inhabits lines, then the limits of what is “in” or “out” and “here” versus “there” melt away. Instead, this paper positions an attitude toward design that revels in contingency and speculates on the temporal and material qualities that make architecture a thriving component of the dynamic, built environment. To illustrate these ambitions, this paper revisits the lost disciplinary legacy of the term disegno and explores contemporary ideas emerging from the consideration of “atmosphere” in the formulation of architectural ideas. Three projects illustrate this proposition and draw “liquid lines” to produce conditions of “both and” by practicing expanded perception and dynamic precision.