Penelope Haralambidou: The Veiled Matrix of Architectural Representation

In connection with the conference and exhibition Drawing Millions of Plans, KADK presents a keynote lecture by Penelope Haralambidou, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. 

Even in its recent digital phase, architectural drawing is still under the hegemony of orthographic projection, the matrimony between the drawing of the plan and the section, instituted during the Renaissance.

Orthographic projection is a potent and often unquestioned, underlying syntax of visual thought, an efficient, but also unavoidably limiting instrument for organizing space: it constitutes an invisible ‘matrix’ dominating spatial thinking throughout the Modern period and up to today, not only in architecture, but also fine art and cinema.

As it is intertwined with all modes of representation in the form of the page, the drawing surface, the computer and the cinema screen, it is very difficult to break through and see beyond it. So how can this veiled matrix be exposed and questioned? 

About Penelope Haralambidou

Dr Penelope Haralambidou is a Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her research lies between architectural design and theory – with a focus on drawing and the relationship between architecture and film – and has been published and exhibited internationally.

She is the author of Marcel Duchamp and the Architecture of Desire (Routledge, 2013) and has contributed writing on themes such allegory, figural theory, stereoscopy and film in architecture to a wide range of publications.