Critique of the Architectural Competition Stimulated by Graphic Expression: Semiotic Convergences in the Rhetoric of Judgment Process

Abstract

The verb gráphein in the Greek language means to draw and to write simultaneously; its action mixes the synthetic nature of the line with the analytical nature of the word. This paper deals with a study on the instrumentalisation of graphic expression within the comparative analysis applied to the critical discourse of the architectural ideas competition. The study is founded on an exceptional and heterogeneous material: the graphic documentation included in critical editorials across various competitions whose results were published in specialised architectural media journals. These publications present a singular semiotic convergence between drawing and writing, which, once dissected, allows us to establish a categorisation of their rhetoric in relation to the modern systematic criticism—descriptive, analytical, interpretative and poetic—and the graphic vehicles employed for their explanation—sketch, croquis or design development drawing, scheme and diagram. This classification reveals the ways in which drawing can lead to thought, reflection and criticism around a set of projects, and unveils the intellectual value of analogical process documents that have been fossilised in the media terrain of the digital present.