The Aestheticization of the Draft

The theme of this issue is endearing: show us your drafts! Show us all your work that you never intended to make public. We know there’s something good in there.

It’s really not unlike architecture as a practice in general. Looking for the beginning of the thread that ties your entire project together. The spark that ignited your ultimate idea, or maybe even the glimmer of something poetically genius that got lost among the value engineering and the construction documents. Architecture is so fascinated by process.

As I sit among piles of sketches and models, I wonder if this has turned into fetish. We are encouraged—even pushed—to showcase our drafts and earliest sketches, even to include them in our portfolios. It’s an obsession that leads some to conjure up an “early draft” even after the design is finalized. We have to show that the genius was there at the start, expressive and poetic, even in its infancy. But in an environment where perfectionism already runs rampant, we find ourselves allowing obsessive curation to inch earlier and earlier in the design process. Those tentative sketches that reflect our earliest ideas may be on that pin-up board tomorrow, or at the final, or in our portfolios, curated professionally to send to our dream jobs. So they need clarity, visual cohesion, and aesthetic promise that aligns with our ultimate design. The anticipation of exhibition places pressure upon an idea that has not yet found its footing.

That being said, I am no advocate for the privatization of the draft. The very challenge, perhaps, is to find the balance between unfiltered improvisation and polished self-branding, to preserve our purity of thought from the pressure of presentation clarity. Maybe we never will strike the balance completely. Or maybe that’s the whole point.