A contribuição do Desenho na procura do essencial

Abstract

The countless times repeated principle, that drawing is the most complete instrument used in the space conception design operations won't have many declared opponents. The ways in which that principle is applied although, will be subject of a greater controversy, different interpretations and distinct practices. Being an activity whose intrinsic nature (the thinking through drawing) covers itself of unspeakable moments, it becomes more important to objectively convey which relation exists among the used processes and the therefrom resulting products. How and why that instrument oftenly does transforms itself into a reduction and narrowing factor of the creative responses, was one of the main concerns and subjects of this paper reflection. The seamless professional activity of architecture, which has been done in parallel with teaching in the same area, also allowed the enriching of this discussion in a comparative analysis of both activities. In the beginning of a certain creative space conception moment, the intuition role is valued and the abduction happens in greater quality and quantity, if the sketch use (oftenly tridimensional) is faster and more spontaneous than the "actual thought". Drafting intuitively an idea is actually the best guarantee that it's materialization is not going to be adulterated and lost after the subsequent inevitable operations of analogy, deduction and induction; in the following facing of reality. Accepting that the nature of those initial drafts is to pursue and find the whole through parts, what kind of draw (or thought) are we discussing? Is its existence one important condition of success of the emerging creative operation? We think so. The revisiting of a certain case - design and construction of a family house in Porto surroundings (1990/97) - took us to the establishment of several questions, the attempt of answering them and the implementation of some convictions. In a second phase of this work, some works and projects conducted from 1973 until 2013 will be analyzed regarding the aforementioned evaluation criteria.