Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Adam Brillhart & Ken Yeung
This paper discusses the “representational framework” unique to drawing practices of carpenters in Southern China. The representational system not only integrates their practical experience but also places a reproducible world model in the quasi-linguistic framework operated between tool and component. Fullscale ink markings are discussed as a “notational language” which condensate construction activities around linearization of symbols in full-scale. This hidden structure of traditional form is distinct in its closeness to construction from the dominant forms of instrumental representation in the world since the European Renaissance. The “minimal signifying units” of this particular drawing practice are discussed as a foundation of a special kind of “operational memory” arising through systematic experience. This representational system yields not only an elastic mode of construction in which joint-making generates open meaning, but also a “habitus” of drawing which has undergone regional adaptation.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.107.109
Volume Editors
Amy Kulper, Grace La & Jeremy Ficca
ISBN
978-1-944214-21-0
