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and the craft of architecture
Felipe Guimarães de Souza Fernandes Loureiro

The use of  3D renderings – computer-
generated images which can look very realistic, some 
of  them being easily mistaken for photographs 
– is widespread in both architectural practice and 
education. At first glance, these images seem to be 
incredibly useful for the communication between 
architects, clients and the general public, since they 
appear to offer a very clear and detailed vision of  
the final ‘product.’ However, my experience as 
a practising architect led me to believe that this 
apparent accuracy is misleading, and that it can 
actually be counter-effective. The realism of  these 
images forces architects to be highly precise about 
aspects that were only supposed to come up at later 
stages, and they can also trick clients into approving 
a “beautiful picture” instead of  a clearly expressed 
architectural idea.

In addition to these concerns, the indiscriminate 
use of  these images seems to reinforce the idea 
that a building – or space, in broader terms – is 
mainly something to be experienced visually, and 
that a good building or space is one in which our 
eyes are constantly looking at ‘good pictures.’ This 
picturesque understanding of  architecture not only 
neglects the haptic experience of  space, flattening 
volumes into surfaces and space into perspectives, 
but it also reduces the work of  the architect to the 
composition of  pictures. As an architect, I cannot 
feel at ease with this reduction, and this unsettling 
led me to pursue a deeper understanding of  the way 
we experience architectural images.

In his 1985 book Ins Universum der technischen 
Bilder,1  Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser presents, 

This picturesque 
understanding 

of architecture… 
reduces the 
work of the 

architect to the 
composition of 

pictures.

“

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“a model of  cultural history” consisting of  five rungs that symbolize 
different moments, each one being defined by a specific medium which 
prevailed in, “the task of  transmitting information crucial to society and 
to individuals.”2 At first, we could only express ourselves and transmit 
any kind of  knowledge through our actions. Then, through the creation 
of  objects, we could perpetuate these actions, leaving their imprints in 
artifacts which could still speak for us when we were no longer present. 
These objects have thus created culture, and were the first medium for 
transmitting and perpetuating it. Later on, images which depicted or 
symbolized objects and actions became even more relevant than the 
objects themselves. These images, such as cave paintings, are what Flusser 
calls traditional images. They were eventually supplanted, around 4000 years 
ago, by linear texts, which explained images, creating what he calls the 
“historical level.” Much more recently, texts have collapsed, “into particles 
that must be gathered up. This is the level of  calculation and computation, 
the level of  technical images,” or images created by apparatuses such as 
cameras, computers and TV sets.3 

This model gives us an image of  a linear process in which Man is 
constantly stepping back from the direct experience of  the world, going 
deeper and deeper into abstraction. However, though new rungs are added, 
the previous ones are not lost or forgotten – they are simply different 
worlds, created and shaped by different media. Figure 1 is an attempt to 
sum-up and illustrate Flusser’s model.

figure 1: Flusser rungs.



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Flusser calls the fifth rung, shaped by the 
prevailing of  technical images, “a new, dimensionless 
level, one to be called, for lack of  a more positive 
designation, ‘posthistory.”4 The term “posthistory” 
rises from the notion that History was created by 
writing, whose linear logic shaped the dominant 
ontology of  an era, and that the prevalence of  
technical images – which are non-linear, but rather 
two-dimensional – marks the end of  History. Today, 
the logics of  linear writing no longer apply to the 
way we experience culture, and this experience 
influences the way in which we perceive reality as 
a whole. Regarding the production of  images, for 
instance, technical images are made by envisioners, 
whereas traditional images were created by image 
makers.

The gesture of  the envisioner is directed from a particle 
toward a surface that can never be achieved, whereas 
that of  the traditional image maker is directed from 
the world of  objects toward an actual surface. The 
first gesture attempts to make concrete (to turn from 
extreme abstraction back into the imaginable); the 
second abstracts (retreats from the concrete). The first 
gesture starts with a calculation; the second starts with 
a solid object.5 

Photographers, for instance, work through an 
apparatus – a camera – and they, “can only desire 
what the apparatus can do. Any image produced 
by a photographer must be within the program of  
the apparatus.”6  The apparatus is itself  a kind of  
medium through which the envisioner works and 
thinks, since, “not only the gesture but also the 
intention of  the photographer is a function of  the 
apparatus. […] a human intention works against the 
autonomy of  the apparatus from the inside, from 
the automatic function itself.”7 

Photography provides us with a great example 
of  how we work through and with apparatuses in 
order to create technical images, but it also gives 
way for a confusion regarding the essence of  these 

This model 
gives us an 
image of a 

linear process 
in which Man 

is constantly 
stepping back 
for the direct 
experience of 

the world

“

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images. Photographs can be seen as snapshots of  reality, which arise, 
“through the capturing and holding of  approaching particles or waves 
from the environment,” but these depictions are essentially different from 
those made through traditional images.8 This can be easily understood if  
we consider their essential similarity with computer-generated images:

The photographer visualizes a house as houses seems to be in the outside, objective 
world. Then he takes an apparatus in hand to “grasp” (with concepts such 
as “perspective” or “shutter speed”) what he has visualized. The apparatus 
calculates these concepts automatically, and the photographer presses a button 
to release the machine to carry out these calculations, making the vision of  the 
house into an image. The computer operator visualizes an airplane as one might 
be found in the outside world. Then he takes an apparatus in hand […] to 
“grasp” what he has visualized […]. The apparatus calculates these concepts 
automatically, and the computer operator presses on the keyboard to make the 
apparatus carry out these calculations, making a visualization of  an airplane 
appear on the screen. The same power to envision is at work in both cases, that 
of  the photographer and of  the computer operator, only it is more evident with the 
computer operator, who is more conscious than the photographer of  this power.9 

At first, these two kinds of  images seem to be very different: the photograph 
of  the house can be seen as a depiction, while the airplane drawing could be 
understood as a model. However, they are both models. In the example above, 
Flusser is talking about an activity which was created by an apparatus – 
there were no photographers before there were cameras – and another 
which already existed, but that was re-created by the use of  an apparatus. 
Architects and designers have always worked with handmade drawings, 
and now most of  them use computers for drawing. We can say that the 
handmade drawings were traditional images, and that they were depictions 
of  what the designer or architect had in mind – they were depictions 
of  visions, and these image makers knew how to build these images. On 
the other hand, anyone can take a picture without understanding how a 
camera works, and how photographs are built. The camera is what Flusser 
calls a black box – a mysterious apparatus that blindly, “transforms the 
effects of  photons on molecules of  silver nitrate into photographs.”10  It 
is opaque, impenetrable.

Referring to his own work process, Flusser describes the functioning 
of  his typewriter, which can be clearly understood and seen as an extension 
of  his fingers: “I can watch as each pressed key sets a hammer in motion 
that strikes the intended letter onto the page and how the carriage moves 
to make way for the next letter.”11  The typewriter is transparent, and Flusser 
seems to believe that this transparency makes it adequate for the craft 



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of  writing: “When I write, I write past the machine 
toward the text.”12  This happens because the 
typewriter is not a medium, but only a tool. The 
medium is linear text, which can be handwritten, 
typed, carved in stone, etc. The act of  typing was 
obviously created by the typewriter, but apparently 
writers learned to use it as instinctively as their 
predecessors used their hands and tools. Writers 
have not become ‘typists.’

On the other hand, an opaque apparatus does 
something, which we do not understand, in a way 
that is invisible to us. Its working has no connection 
or resemblance to human actions, only its interface 
can be recognizable. Analyzing the development of  
human-computer interfaces, Bill Verplank argues:

Piaget described three stages of  learning. We are born 
with ENACTIVE or kinesthetic knowledge; we 
know how to grasp and suck. At a certain age we 
pay more attention to how things look; our ICONIC 
thinking is mistaken for example by a tall glass as 
“more.” Only at a certain age do we understand 
conservation; then we are ready for SYMBOLIC 
thinking. […] The development of  human-computer 
interfaces has followed the opposite path. The first 
interactive computers used teletypes (TTY) and the 
style of  interaction was a dialog of  symbols; I type 
and the computer types back at me. […] with the 
invention of  mouse and bit-map display, the iconic 
graphical “direct manipulation” interface became the 
dominant style. This progression suggests that the next 
stage is enactive interfaces.13 

It is interesting to see that Flusser’s model for 
cultural history is quite similar to Piaget’s model for 
human development, and how human-computer 
interfaces apparently developed in the opposite way, 
becoming increasingly intuitive. With touchscreens 
and gesture recognition, this interaction seems 
much closer to the way we interact with concrete 
objects, but the process has become even more 
opaque, since we do not even have to know how 

The camera 
is what 

Flusser calls 
a black 

box […]. It is 
opaque, 

impenetrable.

“

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to operate the apparatuses – they can read us, understand our gestures, 
decode and compute them. The apparatus offers a field of  possibilities, 
through which we can browse by repeating recognizable gestures – thus, 
to a certain extent, it is the apparatus which operates us. It can capture 
and translate our apparently instinctive gestures, but we have to ‘speak’ its 
language.

The ‘direct manipulation’ interface is still dominant, and the 
opaqueness of  the apparatuses is transferred to the images they generate. 
Flusser states that technical images can never be true nor false – they 
can only be regarded as probable or improbable. This notion becomes quite 
clear if  we consider how easy it is to manipulate technical images. With 
Photoshop and other similar software, photographs can be edited in a 
radical but imperceptible way. We can only tell that a photograph was 
edited when the editing goes too far, making it look improbable. This reveals 
how the “reality” of  technical images is misleading, which led Flusser to 
state that “the basis for the emerging universe and emerging consciousness 
is the calculation of  probability. From now on, concepts such as ‘true’ and 
‘false’ refer only to unattainable horizons, bringing a revolution not only 
in the field of  epistemology but also in those of  ontology, ethics, and 
aesthetics.”14 

This revolution has surely affected architecture in many different ways. 
In his 1982 essay Architecture as Drawing, Alberto Pérez-Gómez describes 
the development of  architectural drawing throughout history, focusing 
on the Renaissance notion that architectural drawings were images of  an 
architectural idea, “implying ‘look’, ‘semblance’, and ‘form.”

While the traditional builder, a primeval poet (from the Greek poiesis, to make) 
made his thoughts into building through the implementation of  an operational 
geometry (in the original sense of  giving human dimension to external reality), 
the Renaissance architect articulated the necessarily “abstract language” of  
walls, openings, and columns in architectural drawing, by means of  plans 
(ichnographia), elevations (orthographia) and profiles or sections.15

These drawings were never understood as pictures of  the future building 
– they represented an idea, “to be fulfilled in the building.” Since most 
architects were deeply involved in the construction process, they were also 
responsible for turning this idea into reality. Thus, architectural drawings 
formed, “an autonomous realm of  expression,” somehow independent 
from architecture itself  - but always aiming for it.

During the 18th century, the development of  descriptive geometry 
allowed architects to elaborate geometrically precise drawings. Architects 
could then distance themselves from the building site, drawing, “universal 



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projections that could […] be perceived as 
reductions of  buildings, creating the illusion of  
drawing as a neutral tool that communicates 
unambiguous information, like scientific prose.”16  
We can thus say that descriptive geometry is the 
“mother” of  photography, since these drawings 
created the same illusion created by photographs 
– that of  an impartial, direct depiction of  reality. 
These “realistic” drawings have freed architects from 
the craft of  building, turning them into “efficient 
designers.” Thus, the craft of  the architect changed 
from conceiving an architectural idea – that could 
be communicated through the abstract language of  
drawings – and getting it built, to conceiving and 
creating drawings that illustrated how parts of  a 
building should be built. This is why, following the 
development of  descriptive geometry, architects 
like Boullée and Ledoux created another meaning 
for architectural drawings:

Their drawings constituted a set of  theoretical 
projects that they assumed to be true architecture, in 
opposition to their actual buildings. Not surprisingly, 
both architects felt that architecture was deeply akin 
to painting. Thus architecture became primarily the 
making of  the drawing (or the model), the same poetic 
act that has always magically revealed the truth of  
reality.17 

The emphasis on this relation between architecture 
and painting may signal an attempt to keep the craft 
of  architecture close to traditional imagery, protecting 
it from the proto-technical images created through 
descriptive geometry. Thus, at this point, we can say 
that there were two kinds of  architectural drawings: 
instructional drawings made for the construction 
site and poetic drawings made for the expression 
of  “true” architectural ideas. Although the poetic 
drawings to which Pérez-Gómez refers illustrated 
utopian, sometimes “unrealistic” buildings, actual 
buildings were still conceived through similar 
images, that is, from images of  architectural ideas. 

Flusser states 
that technical 

images can 
never be true 

nor false – they 
can only be 

regarded as 
probable or 
Improbable.

“

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If  we compare them with those made by Renaissance architects, the only 
difference would be that these images were now developed and divided 
into a set of  instructional drawings which would guide the construction 
process.

Today, most architectural drawings are made through apparatuses, and 
even handmade drawings are inserted into a world dominated by technical 
images. Figure 2 below combines the process described by Pérez-Gómez 
with the model presented by Flusser. The visualization of  this combination 
seems to highlight the fact that the current role of  architectural images 
does not seem to be quite clear.

In a 1990 lecture held in Budapest, Flusser states:

The idea was that image should document politics. But, in the first half  of  the 
XX century, and more strongly after the Second World War, this relationship 
began to change. All of  the sudden, politics were made in order to get into 
an image. The purpose of  politics was an image – the purpose of  the Arabs 
hijackers of  airplanes was to be taken in television. Politics is aimed at being 
taken in an image.18 

To a certain extent, the same inversion happened to architectural images. 

figure 2: timeline of architectural drawing.



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Now, it is the picture that generates the building. 
Photo-realistic 3D renderings “look” real, as if  
they were photographs taken in the future, after 
the building is complete. Thus, these images are 
“models for photographs,” and not depictions 
of  architectural ideas. While most architectural 
drawings aim to represent a building which will only 
exist in the future, these images try to represent 
photographs that can only be taken in the future.

In a New York Times article on the role of  
renderings in the real estate market, Elizabeth 
A. Harris states that “the real purpose of  these 
drawings is not to predict the future. Their real 
goal is to control it.”19  This idea of  controlling 
the future by providing an apparently objective 
vision of  it can be traced back to the 18th century 
architectural drawings, and has reached its peak 
with the apparent photorealism of  computer-
generated images – which look even more objective 
and ‘neutral.’ However, to a certain extent, these 
images only exist as instructions to be interpreted 
by apparatuses. They have the same logic of  
the instructional drawings which made possible 
the creation of  industrial design – they are a set 
of  instructions, the numerical description of  a 
composition. This is the logic of  programming, 
the internal logics of  the apparatus which is, at the 
same time, tool, surface, and frame.

Becoming envisioners, architects have lost 
the connection to the craft of  image-making. 
This affects the expression, representation and 
communication of  architectural ideas, and also the 
construction of  the ideas themselves. Descriptive 
geometry created the theoretical background for 
the emergence of  photography, and technical 
images as a whole, since its “neutral” depiction is 
something like an apparatus; it is a system that is 
already somehow “outside” of  the architect’s mind, 
and through which he must work, keeping himself  
inside a limited field of  possibilities.

the same 
inversion 

happened to 
architectural 

images. Now, it is 
the picture that 

generates the 
building.

“

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The role of  the architect, like we usually see it now, is still the one forged 
in the 18th century. By working through and with descriptive geometry, 
architects are almost like industrial designers, the main difference being 
that construction has remained a much less automated process. Industrial 
design, including not only the design of  industrial products but of  the 
machines themselves, was only possible after the creation of  descriptive 
geometry – and, if  we see it as a “mental apparatus,” we can say that 
this apparatus has created industrial designers, as much as the camera has 
created photographers. After all, how could one conceive a machine to 
manufacture a product without being able to predict and translate the 
shape of  the product with extreme precision? The machine had to be 
programmed.

Following the process described by Pérez-Gómez, we can sketch a 
progression that starts with the traditional builder, the primeval poet who 
worked directly on the building itself, develops into the role of  the builder/
artist/intellectual of  the Renaissance, who worked with abstract drawings 
while still being deeply involved with building, and moves forward to 
the efficient-designers of  the Enlightenment, who made instructional 
drawings in their studios, detached from the construction site. Figure 3 
demonstrates a growing separation between thinking and building, which 
was mediated by drawing.

Now, we give instructions to an apparatus that “draws” instructional 
images, which will then be interpreted by the builder. However, with 
3D printing, another apparatus is responsible for the production of  the 

figure 3: Architecture’s increasing abstraction.



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object itself. In this case, a software – which can be 
the same the designer uses for drawing – decodes 
and transmits instructions for the apparatus which 
is going to mold, cut, or sculpt the object. Thus, 
there is no need for dialogue between different 
people – architect and builder, or designer and 
production engineer; the dialogue happens between 
apparatuses, and it is obviously opaque to us. All the 
designer needs to do is to give instructions to the 
software. Thus, we can say that this technology 
frees designers from having to create instructional 
drawings – they can focus exclusively on the 
creation of  the object, of  its form.

In a fairly near future, 3D printers may become 
widespread, so that anyone will be able to design 
and print (build) objects. Thus, no instructional 
images will be needed at all. Would anyone need 
designers then? Or should we expect designers to 
be the ones creating the best conceptual models 
for printing? The dialogue between apparatuses 
may free architects and designers from the need to 
create instructional images, but can this freedom be 
demeaning to their practices? Bill Verplank believes 
that the development of  enactive interfaces can 
bring us closer to the objects we shape, like the 
traditional builder mentioned by Pérez-Gómez:

This direct engagement with the materials, producing 
immediate results, is what makes for a craft tradition. 
There is no time to step back and plan or abstract 
and analyse. We need no principles, textbooks or 
classrooms, only studios. Masters pass on their 
practices to apprentices; the only learning is by doing.

The introduction of  architecture and engineering as 
distinct from construction and manufacture made 
explicit the role of  drawings and design. Are we 
returning to craft and forgetting design? 

20 

Verplank seems to consider craft as a practical 
skill learned through imitation and repetition, and 
design as an intellectual activity for ‘anticipation 
and reflection.’ Many of  us may share this notion, 

the dialogue 
happens 
between 

apparatuses, 
and it is 

obviously 
opaque to 

us.

“

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only using the word “craft” when talking about a hands-on activity such 
as woodworking or shoemaking. These craftsmen use different tools 
and different gestures, whereas computers are now the main – if  not 
the only – tool for intellectual work. Architects, engineers, lawyers and 
accountants work in similar workstations – desks with computers – and 
repeat the same gestures – typing and clicking. Thus, in physical terms, 
these activities have been leveled. These professionals work with different 
software, which provide different possibilities, but they are all envisioners. 
Their work is seen as a set of  intellectual activities that can be reduced to 
the logics of  programming – to information processing, to computation. 
Thus, while working, they can only imagine what was already imagined by 
the programmer, and this limitation can be really damaging to the poetic 
dimension of  creative work.

Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho has developed the “Theory 
of  the Four Discourses,” which consists in the idea that “human discourse 
is a unique potency which can be actualized in four different ways: 
poetics, rhetoric, dialectics and analytics (logic).”21 This theory is based 
on his interpretation of  the overall structure of  Aristotelian philosophy, 
considering that the differences between the four discourses lie in the 
human intentions behind each one of  them. Like Flusser, Carvalho also 
provides a model in which different eras were created by the prevalence 
of  one of  these discourses, which had, at the time, a recognized authority 

figure 4: three models.



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over the other three. This model also illustrates 
an increasing abstraction, a distancing from 
concrete experience which follows towards an 
analytic worldview, “scientific reason emerges 
as the supreme fruit of  a tree which has poetic 
imagination as its roots, planted in the soil of  the 
sensible nature.”22 

This does not mean, however, that we live in 
an analytical age devoid of  poetic discourse. In fact, 
this gradual movement from the poetic imagination 
all the way to logical ‘certainty’ pervades all creative 
work. Carvalho argues that “Poetics correspond 
[…] to the ‘first level’, to the connection between 
the data captured by the senses and the universe 
of  discourse. The bridge between ‘world’ and 
‘discourse.”23 Thus, when we are creating, we 
are turning our impressions of  the world into 
discourse, that is, into something that can be thought 
and communicated. This is why Carvalho states that 
“Poetry belongs, therefore, to the genre of  mimesis, 
it is a form of  imitation, and its specific difference 
is that it does not imitate what has happened (like 
History, for instance), but what is possible. The 
imitation of  the possible is the definition of  poetic 
work.”24 

We can then say that all creative work begins 
with the imitation of  the possibilities in which 
the work will develop. Architects and designers 
begin their work not by envisioning images or 
manipulating form, but by discovering and selecting 
possibilities in which – and with which – to work. We 
can only discover possibilities by imagining them, 
and everything that can be imagined can become a 
possibility. When working with black boxes, we can 
surely use our imagination to discover possibilities 
inside those provided by the apparatus, but we are 
necessarily limiting our imagination, which was 
open to the whole of  reality – as captured by our 
sensitive nature – to the program of  the apparatus.

When we draw through apparatuses, we are 

when we are 
creating, we 
are turning our 

impressions of 
the world into 

discourse

“

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necessarily creating a gap between thinking and drawing. Actually, we are 
not really drawing, but only giving instructions to an opaque, mysterious 
black box which will draw for us. Even though enactive interfaces can make 
this process more direct and intuitive, there is still this gap, this barrier – 
we are still losing something along the way. Pérez-Gómez refers to the 
platonic concept of  Chora, which is, “both cosmic place and abstract space, 
and is also the substance of  human crafts. […] It is the ‘region’ of  that 
which exists.”25  When we design through apparatuses, the computer is not 
just a substitute for the pencil – it is actually a substitute for the pencil, the 
paper and, ultimately, a “virtual” substitute for Chora. Apparatuses try to 
create a virtual Chora, an immaterial region for that which exists – but only 
exists as information, as numbers which can be rearranged into images. Its 
hidden functioning emulates the aura of  mystery that one can sense in the 
dimension of  the possible, but it cannot really emulate the complete realm 
of  possibility, the reach of  the imaginable.

In any creative work, the process of  imagining never stops, and it 
is actually made not only through thinking, but also through testing and 
prototyping. Architects and designers draw to visualize what they imagine, 
and to test possibilities. These drawings are not “printed ideas” – snapshots 
of  what they are envisioning in their minds – but part of  the process of  
imagining, of  unraveling possibilities. Irish architect John Tuomey, for 
instance, draws inspiration from the ‘constellations’ of  drawings made by 
Carlo Scarpa, who filled pages with small conceptual sketches in which he 
tested many variations of  the same solution. Scarpa stated: “I want to see 
things, that’s all I really trust. I want to see, and that’s why I draw. I can see 
an image only if  I draw it.”26  Palladio’s sketches for the reconstruction of  
the Baths of  Agrippa, for instance, are of  the same nature. These drawings 
have 400 years between them, but their similarities allow us to believe that 
the process behind them was fairly the same. At least in this conceptual 
stage, Palladio and Scarpa worked in a very similar way – they were not 
thinking and drawing, but thinking through drawing.

Computers and 3D printers may seem to free us from a secondary 
activity which is – or at least was – part of  the intellectual activity of  
design. However, this activity is not secondary – it is actually what makes 
design a craft. There is no design without drawing, especially without the 
kind of  drawing which works as a way of  thinking, “imagining, shaping, 
seeing, all at the same time.”27  This kind of  drawing can never be delegated 
to apparatuses, since these black boxes can never be poetic in the sense 
of  making reality transparent to us. Architecture does this in a deep and 
direct way, by shaping the world in which we live. 



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The emergence of  parametricism may lead us to 
believe that, in the future, the work of  an architect 
can actually be reduced to just inserting data into a 
software, which will then create forms.28  However, 
architecture cannot be reduced to a set of  choices, 
to data processing. Any creative work develops in 
what Jorge Luis Borges calls, “the ambiguous time 
of  art,” or, “In real time, in history, whenever a man 
is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses 
one and eliminates and loses the others. Such is 
not the case in the ambiguous time of  art, which is 
similar to that of  hope and oblivion. In that time, 
Hamlet is sane and is mad.”29 

Architectural design is a creative, poetic activity 
based on reflection and synthesis, and achieved 
through drawing and visualization. Apparatuses can 
surely be very useful for architects, as long as they 
do not let themselves be “tricked” by the apparently 
unbiased, objective outputs made by these devices 
– and they also should not use them for tricking 
others. As Flusser puts it: “From the standpoint 
of  so-called common sense, technical images are 
objective depictions of  things out in the world. 
The critical project is to show that in defiance of  
common sense, they are not mirrors but projections 
that are programmed to make common sense 
appear mirror like.”30 Architecture is indeed a craft, 
responsible for creating a connection between our 
lived-world and our culture, making some aspects 
of  reality transparent to us. Its scope is that of  the 
imaginable. This scope should not be reduced, and 
it just cannot be programmed.

ENDNOTES

1. Vilém Flusser, Into the Universe of  Technical Images 
(Minneapolis: University of  Minnesota Press, 2011).

2. Ibid., p. 5.

3. Ibid., p. 7.

4. Ibid., p. 15.



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5. Ibid., p. 21.

6. Ibid., p. 20.

7. Ibid., p. 20.

8. Ibid., p. 42.

9. Ibid., p. 43.

10. Ibid., p. 16.

11. Ibid., p. 24.

12. Ibid., p. 36.

13. Bill Verplank, “Interaction Design Sketchbook”, p. 22, accessed August 
09, 2014, http://www.billverplank.com/IxDSketchBook.pdf

14. Flusser, Into the Universe of  Technical Images, p. 17.

15. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “Architecture as Drawing”, JAE, Vol. 36, No. 
2 (Winter, 1982): 2-7.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. “Vilém Flusser - Television Image and Political Space in the Light of  the 
Romanian Revolution”, YouTube video, 24:32, posted by “Klenov Vasiliy”, 
May 31, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFTaY2u4NvI

19. Elizabeth A. Harris, “Idealized or Caricature, Architectural Renderings 
Are Weapons in Real Estate”, The New York Times, August 26, 2013, accessed 
August 09, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/nyregion/
architects-renderings-as-a-weapon-in-real-estate.html?hp&_r=1&

20. Bill Verplank, “Interaction Design Sketchbook”, p. 2, accessed August 
09, 2014, http://www.billverplank.com/IxDSketchBook.pdf

21. Olavo de Carvalho, Aristóteles em Nova Perspectiva: Introdução à Teoria dos 
Quatro Discursos (São Paulo: É Realizações, 2006), p. 26. Translation by the 
author.

22. Ibid., p. 43.

23. Ibid., p. 105.

24. Ibid., p. 137.

25. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “Chora: The Space of  Architectural 
Representation”, in Chora Volume One: Intervals in the Philosophy of  Architecture, 
edited by Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcell (Montreal: McGill-
Queens University Press, 1994), pp. 1-34.

26. Carlo Scarpa, in Carlo Scarpa. The Complete Works, edited by 
Francesco Dal Co and Giuseppe Mazzariol (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), p. 



230

isparchitecture.com

164. Cf. John Tuomey, Architecture, Craft and Culture 
(London: Gandon Editions, 2008), p. 14.

27. Bill Verplank, Interaction Design Sketchbook, 
unpublished ms. dated December 1, 2009, retrieved 
August 09, 2014, from http://www.billverplank.
com/IxDSketchBook.pdf.

28. See Patrik Schumacher, “The Parametricist 
Manifesto”, presentation at the 2008 Venice 
Biennale, retrieved August 10, 2013, from http://
archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=4623.

29. Jorge Luis Borges, “The False Problem of  
Ugolino,” in Selected Non-fictions. Volume 1 (New 
York: Viking Penguin, 1999), pp. 277-281.

30. Vilém Flusser, Into the Universe of  Technical Images 
(Minneapolis: University of  Minnesota Press, 
2011), p. 49.


