° 0 8 4 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° The City [within] The Drawing is the last of a series of four installations made in the course of a PhD by creative practice.1 These installations posed questions about the material and temporal limits of conventional codes of architectural drawing and together attempted to forge an alternative urban representation. The series concluded in The City [within] The Drawing as a cumulated transcription within which the previous installations were embedded. This last installation expressed the negotiations that emerge between the actuality of the city and its image, by engaging with architectural representation2 as an act of inhabitation3 performed through the spatial experience of both city and drawing. As an attempt to ‘draw’ the actual city into representation, mapping was deployed as a kind of inhabitation that promotes a reciprocal close ‘looking’ between the city and the drawing. The city [within] the drawing: The urban in the space of representation S o p h i a B a n o u F i g s . 0 1 & 0 2 S o p h i a B a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . T h e C i t y [ w i t h i n ] T h e D r a w i n g : G e n e r a l v i e w s a c r o s s t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n a n d t o t h e c i t y [ I n s t a l l a t i o n , P h o t o s : A u t h o r ] ° 0 8 5 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° Inhabitation, therefore involves engaging with the ‘material’ trace of not only the city, but also the observer and the notation itself. Shifting focus from a normative architectural solid-void dualism, the project addressed the urban as a transitory condition between order and event. Inscribed elements printed across suspended layers of clear acetate presented a constellation of marks that corresponded to specific trajectories, relationships of vision, and transformations of the materiality of both the city and the (preceding) installations. These markings grafted conventional codes from dance notation, geological mapping, and celestial cartography into architectural convention. F i g . 0 3 S o p h i a B a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . T h e C i t y [ w i t h i n ] T h e D r a w i n g : T h e t o t a l o f t r a c e s u n f o l d e d a g a i n s t a s p r e a d o f t h e g a l l e r y [ I n s t a l l a t i o n , P h o t o s : A u t h o r ] ° 0 8 6 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° F i g s . 0 4 & 0 5 S o p h i a B a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . T h e C i t y [ w i t h i n ] T h e D r a w i n g : P l a n a r t r a c e s o n t h e s u s p e n d e d c l e a r a c e t a t e p r i n t s [ I n s t a l l a t i o n , P h o t o s : A u t h o r ] The nesting of the drawing’s earlier phases within one another was extended to the city through the inclusion of the direct city views from the gallery that layered with the transcribed traces. Provisionally reterritorialized upon a transparent substrate material, these signs were constantly repositioned against the city and the space of the gallery through the relational movement of the viewers. ° 0 8 7 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° F i g s . 0 6 & 0 7 S o p h i a B a n o u ( 2 0 1 4 ) . D r a w o f a D r a w i n g : O n e o f t h e p r e c e d i n g r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s , ‘ n e s t e d ’ i n T h e C i t y [ w i t h i n ] T h e D r a w i n g , s t o o d a s a p a r t i a l ‘ k e y ’ t o t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n [ P o r t a b l e i n s t a l l a t i o n , P h o t o s : A u t h o r ] ” ] The multiple layers of the drawing carried the presence of the previous installations, not as mere signs but as distinct situated spatialities. Elements of previous sitings such as markings and scars were stenciled on polyester sheets to infuse the transparent layers with the neutral ‘white’ of the gallery. The solidity of the gallery floor afforded the signs of the various layers to become fixed upon the gallery surface, F i g s . 1 0 , 1 1 , 1 2 S o p h i a B a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . T h e C i t y [ w i t h i n ] T h e D r a w i n g : T h e C i t y M o d e l , w h e r e s u r f a c e e l e m e n t s a r e m a t e r i a l i s e d i n p l a s t e r a n d v i s u a l r e l a t i o n s a r e c o n c r e t i s e d i n s a n d e d a c r y l i c , e m e r g i n g f r o m f l o o r [ I n s t a l l a t i o n , P h o t o s : A u t h o r ] whilst modelled elements sought to ‘push through’ the two-dimensionality of the drawing surface. This served to materialise and project back the ‘city’ emerging from within the drawing, as at once ‘other’ to and the same as its onlooker. ° 0 8 8 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° F i g s . 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 5 S o p h i a B a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . T h e C i t y [ w i t h i n ] T h e D r a w i n g : V i e w s o f t h e C i t y M o d e l [ I n s t a l l a t i o n , P h o t o s : A u t h o r ] The installation, as a situated experience of drawing, performed as a ‘mediating object’ between city and spectator, prompting conditions of observation to persistently reconfigure by placing the two in mutually shifting relations. ° 0 8 9 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° F i g s . 0 8 & 0 9 S o p h i a B a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . T h e C i t y [ w i t h i n ] T h e D r a w i n g : V i e w s f r o m t h e c i t y i n t o t h e d r a w i n g / i n s t a l l a t i o n [ I n s t a l l a t i o n , P h o t o s : A u t h o r ] In this recursive process between sites of origin and sites of representation, the medium of installation posed as an opportunity to be immersed in, or rather inhabit, a ‘space of representation’, as the material recoding of the city within an expanded field. This representational field incorporated the kind of objects and conditions upon whose exclusion the coherence of the city had previously depended. ° 0 9 0 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° E n d n o t e s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 T h e i n s t a l l a t i o n w a s p r e s e n t e d i n M a r c h 2 0 1 5 , a t t h e T e n t G a l l e r y, E d i n b u r g h C o l l e g e o f A r t , f r o m r e s e a r c h u n d e r t a k e n a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f E d i n b u r g h , s u p e r v i s e d b y P r o f M a r k D o r r i a n a n d D r E l l a C h m i e l e w s k a . O n t h e p r e c e d i n g i n s t a l l a t i o n s s e e B a n o u , S . ( 2 0 1 5 ) . A n i m a t e d G a z e s : M o t i o n a n d R e p r e s e n t a t i o n i n t h e K a l e i d o s c o p i c C i t y. D r a w i n g O n , 0 1 : P r e s e n t s . R e t r i e v e d f r o m h t t p : // w w w. d r a w i n g o n . o r g / i s s u e /0 1 , a n d B a n o u , S . ( 2 0 1 5 ) . D e e p S u r f a c e : O n t h e S i t u a t i o n o f D r a w i n g . I n f l e c t i o n 0 2 : P r o j e c t i o n , 7 6 - 8 3 . 2 T h e o b j e c t o f t h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i o n w a s t h e c i t y o f E d i n b u r g h , h o w e v e r, a n d d e s p i t e t h e o p e r a t i v e c h a r a c t e r o f t h e s i t e - s p e c i f i c i t i e s t h a t e m e r g e d , t h e q u e s t i o n s r a i s e d a n d t h e e f f e c t s p r o d u c e d s h o u l d n o t b e c o n s i d e r e d a s p e r t a i n i n g t o t h i s p a r t i c u l a r c i t y, a s t h e y h a v e b e e n d r i v e n b y a c o n c e r n w i t h t h e a g e n c y o f d r a w i n g r a t h e r t h a n t h e s p e c i f i c c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f t h e c i t y r e p r e s e n t e d . 3 T h e i d e a o f d r a w i n g a s i n h a b i t a t i o n i s b a s e d o n i t s u n d e r s t a n d i n g a s a s i t e - s p e c i f i c a c t a n d c a n b e t r a c e d t o n o t i o n s o f s u b j e c t i f i c a t i o n t h a t e m e r g e d i n c a r t o g r a p h i c a p p r o a c h e s t o a r c h i t e c t u r a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a n d s p e c i f i c a l l y t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a s s i t e i n t h e w o r k o f M e t i s . S e e H e i d e g g e r ( 1 9 9 3 ) D o r r i a n & H a w k e r ( 2 0 0 2 ) . ° 0 9 1 I n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : T H E U R B A N T H I N G ° Heidegger, M. (1993). ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’. In Farrell Krell, D. (Ed.), Basic Writings (pp. 356-). London: Routledge. Dorrian, M. & Hawker, A. (2002). ‘Postscript as Pretext’. In Metis: Urban Cartographies. London: Black Dog Publishing. R e f e r e n c e s