Drawing as Method and Process
Teaching drawing at Modus School of Architecture, Art and Design
Modus is a preparatory school for studies in architecture, art, and design, as well as a sustained investigation into the potentialities of drawing. Here, drawing is used to pose questions, uncover spatial and formal possibilities, and articulate new architectural statements. The school is founded on the belief that while architecture can be described and understood through language and theory, it is largely created through the many layers of drawing.
Teaching at Modus consciously works with the tension between intuitive gestures and precise statements. The first fragile mark on the paper, the ‘mistaken’ line, or the intuitive sketch often becomes a reference point later in the process, and it is through repetition of and reflection on these early marks that conscious architectural statements can emerge.
A drawing may begin unpredictably through exercises of observation and recording that encourage moments of chance. The starting point may be a physical setup, a spatial situation, or another concrete reference, and the drawing is used as a tool for seeing, understanding, and learning from its formal conditions. There is no distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ drawings: only between experiences. Mistakes, displacements, and ‘noise’ in the drawing are not seen as deviations to be eliminated, but as productive disturbances that can catalyse new directions. Drawing thus takes on the character of an open system: a space for discovery, where architectural ideas are not only articulated but also (re)discovered.
The next phase involves processing and revisiting the initial sketches in an interplay between elaboration and abstraction—between addition and omission. Drawing becomes a space for experimentation and insight. The intuitive is allowed to meet the analytical, and the unconscious is gradually brought into awareness.
In the final phase, the earlier observations and sketch proposals are transformed into new architectural statements. The drawing is activated as a performative tool—a site where possibilities are released, previous expressions are amplified, and formal potentials are consolidated.
At Modus, drawing is both the aim and the means; both beginning and transformation. The initial, tentative sketches may resemble architectural drawings in their simple and exploratory marks; they may mimic architecture, but it is through continued development that they become architecture. It is here—between the planned and the unexpected—that architecture emerges.
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Modus School of Architecture, Art and Design was founded in 2015 by architect and educator Kristine Mogensen, who previously taught at The Royal Danish Academy – School of Architecture from 2012 to 2017. Since then, several hundred students have been part of the school’s practice-based community, where drawing is continuously explored as both a method and a form of inquiry.
