Paper short abstract:

This paper will investigate the complex relationship between the sketch, the digitally influenced presentation image and the realised building in the context of images for the Museo Nationale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI) in Rome.

Paper long abstract:

It was Heinrich Wölfflin who proclaimed in response to Baroque innovation, "The most direct expression of an artist's intention is the sketch." From Wölfflin's influence what is valued is the capacity of the sketch to signify the locus of mastery of the architect's unmediated thought. Considered as the trace of purely cerebral affect, the sketch has been characterised therefore, as having the immediacy of a signature and treated as evidence of creative origins. The work of this paper is to question the assuredness of this claim through an investigation of Zaha Hadid's sketches. Problematic in Wölfflin's vision is the assumed mirroring of internal mental processes to an artefact without the transactional demands derived from techniques and conventions of representation central to the discipline. At a gestural and technical-conventional level, the sketch's 'facture' is fundamentally tied within a process of production that traverses many differing forms of representation, ones that can transgress traditions in the divide between imagining, picturing and realised building. This paper will investigate the complex relationship between the sketch, the digitally influenced presentation image and the realised building in the context of images for the Museo Nationale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI) in Rome to question the nature of Wölfflin's claim of "direct expression of an artist's intention".