– Raffael Baur and Patricia Guaita

The following text recounts the week-long drawing workshop held at Shatwell Farm in August 2024. To read the students’ reflections and view their drawings, click here. To read invited expert Sergio Ekerman’s account of the two lectures he delivered throughout the week, click here.

The 2024 ENAC Summer Workshop at Shatwell Farm brought together students from ENAC EPFL and the UK to explore drawing as a fundamental tool in architecture and engineering. The focus was on hand-drawn surveys—understanding drawing as a tactile and embodied practice for observing and engaging with the natural landscape. These explorations were enriched by critical discussions and research in the Drawing Matter archive, and through two lectures led by Sergio Ekerman.

Working in an outdoor, in-situ atelier, students constructed a light wooden pyramid and employed various low-tech methods to measure the surrounding environment. The aim was to develop spatial fragments that offered a new understanding of Shatwell Farm, with drawing by hand serving as both a method of inquiry and a means of measuring the site. Through observation and the making of drawings and light constructions, material and climatic conditions became intertwined, and allowed students to explore the experiential dimensions of sits and space. This process encouraged participants to reflect on their relationship with the environment, emphasising the time and care required to engage deeply with the site. Drawing directly at the site became a method of knowledge production, fostering a sense of collective intimacy.

Aligned with our research on the pedagogy of making, the workshop helped us understand the potential of embodied practices and the way of reconnecting the body with the natural environment. Drawings evolved into assemblages that incorporated material, atmospheric, and climatic interactions. These drawings create more complete, less reductive worlds, revealing the pedagogical potential of drawing not only as a design tool, but as a means of cultivating sensitivities to the temporal and environmental dimensions of architectural practice. They speak of other ways of seeing and constructing the world.