Drawing to read architectural heritage

Abstract

Architectural documentation is a contextual study that aims to record patterns of lives and rudiments of civilization embedded in the built environment. Documenters collect measurements from historic surfaces and then transcribe these field data into 2D measured drawings that include existing architectural, material and structural conditions. Although the documentation activities seem very straightforward, with a series of actions to portray the architectural heritage through graphical records, the process itself is an interpretive account of the historic structure, which documenters thickly describe in the architectural context. The act of seeing, observing, interpreting and then capturing the essence of cultural heritage offers a methodical process, which carries significant qualities similar to that of thick description widely used in ethnographic fieldwork. Thinking between architectural documentation as an enquiry of thick description and measured drawings as the product of an interpretive account of what the historic structure denotes, this article seeks to acquire an understanding of drawing in architectural documentation, focusing on engagement with cultural heritage.