Unit 3 explored ways of working with drawings from the DRAWING MATTER Collection, which were also the subject of the project and exhibition Alternative Histories.

These drawings foregrounded the development of tectonic sensibilities through the generative practices of translating drawings into models, further drawings and design briefs.  

We approached the drawings in the archive as promissory working drawings—a term usually associated with the detailed drawings that architects produce to describe (and anticipate) the construction and coordination of a building project. Through a forensic way of working-with archival drawings, students started imagining another, different future for these drawings, questioning: the architectural (hi)stories, theories and practices embedded in them; the ways particular modes of representations provide insights into the design process set up by their author(s); and, how this form of architectural knowledge is recounted and reworked today.  

As a way of responding to this form of knowledge, the students proposed Annexes that addressed existing and imagined Archives. Situated around Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London—a site containing significant and diverse historic and contemporary buildings—each Annexe aims to reframe the relationship its Archive has with the city.