ROME.- Stop Drawing. Architecture beyond Representation is the new project by the Department of Contemporary Architecture and Design, directed by Lorenza Baroncelli.
The exhibition was conceived and curated by Pippo Ciorra and is being held at MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts. It offers a compelling exploration of the ongoing transformations within the world of architecture and the tools used to create, represent and communicate it. In the beginning, there was the drawing: an original act capable of synthesising in a single gesture the relationship between space, function and structure, an indispensable tool for any spatial thought. Then, from the final decades of the last century, we witnessed the rise of digital techniques, practices borrowed from art, exercises in political activism and hands-on participatory forms that shape the spaces we inhabit, giving less importance to "beautiful drawings".
Works by significant figures - some drawn from the museum’s own collections - accompany visitors on a journey through the 20th and 21st centuries, illustrating how the ability to represent and define space, once the exclusive domain of drawing, has now expanded to include a world of digital simulations, collages, videos, performances, textiles and more. These new representational forms are capable of profoundly reshaping the future of architecture and spatial disciplines.
Once defined by Leon Battista Alberti as the unique home of architectural thought, today drawing is dissolving into countless different forms, presented in the various sections of the exhibition. Digital culture tends to replace it with the input of data and algorithms at the very outset of the design process. Installation, film, performance and other creative practices instead substitute it in the work of those who aim to defend the artistic nature of architectural design. Direct engagement with lived spaces and close collaboration with communities are the preferred tools of those who believe in architecture’s political value. Finally, the exhibition touches on cases in which drawing is interpreted as a choice and a form of resistance. Among the featured authors are those who seek to preserve its role in reaffirming disciplinary identity, those who oppose or aim to bend digital tools to an analogue aesthetic, and those who simply reject the reduction of architecture to the broad field of art, which is often - rightly or wrongly - seen as too detached from the actual structure of the world.
In harmony with the fluid layout and terraced spaces of Gallery 3, the exhibition route, designed by studio DEMOGO, unfolds through a series of supports and environments of varying scale, where the works emerge like islands in a narrative archipelago. Invited to find a balance between the order imposed by spatial sequence and their own perceptual path, visitors are guided through the five sections of the exhibition, each narrating different approaches and multiple perspectives on the evolution of architecture over time.
The vast archive of authored drawings from the MAXXI Architecture Collection marks the beginning of the exhibition route, occupying the picture gallery along the gallery’s ramp with works and representations by masters such as Carlo Scarpa, Aldo Rossi and Giancarlo De Carlo. Ranging from more conventional renderings to visionary compositions, this section bears witness to the role that drawing has played as a tool of cultural and disciplinary hegemony – particularly in Italy – during a recent phase in the history of architecture.
The disappearance of traditional media goes hand in hand with the rise of new technologies, which on one hand simplify the architect’s work, and on the other stimulate imagination by opening new avenues for research. The digital section is explored through the pioneering Generator Project (1978–1980) by Cedric Price & John Frazer, reflections and studies on the computerisation of architecture collected by Nicholas Negroponte in the interview The Architecture Machine (1970), and by many others including Matias del Campo & Sandra Manninger and Lucia Tahan, who for two decades have contributed to the discourse on parametric, generative, algorithmic and hyper-modern architecture, radically influencing how projects are represented.
When architecture becomes a civil and political act, addressing the most pressing issues of our time - ecology, resource management, inclusion, racial and gender equality, post-humanism and decolonisation - two main operative directions emerge, both represented in the section dedicated to “activists”. For some, the rejection of traditional architectural practices takes the form of editorial or institutional projects, as in The Funambulist Magazine by Léopold Lambert, which explores the relationship between architecture, politics and social justice. At the same time, Berlin’s Floating University (2019–2022) by Raumlabor and the Sexy Assemblage project by the Orizzontale collective provide examples of how practical, performative engagement aims at direct political involvement of communities.
In the artistic section, architecture is enriched by new languages and tools, extending the boundaries of representation, conceptualisation and design experimentation. As Hans Hollein once foresaw, everything can be architecture: Frank Gehry, Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, November Wong, Olafur Eliasson, Frida Escobedo, Gordon Matta-Clark, Cyprien Gaillard, Philippe Rahm and Hollein himself are just a few of the artists and architects who, through collages, textile works, illustrated narratives, virtual realities and bodies in motion, show how every gesture can become an architectural act.
Within the digital realm, drawing not only survives but becomes the guardian of an ideological and artistic legacy: the works of Jorinde Voigt, Jo Noero, Atelier Bow-Wow, Jimenez Lai (Bureau Spectacular), Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo and CAMPO firmly defend the traditional, technical and expressive space of drawing as a true statement of method, in which hand-drawn representation re-emerges as a conscious choice, bringing the narrative of the exhibition to a close.
