What is the 4-Dimensional Drawing?
Since one of the 4 research facets of this thesis– and really, the most significant angle of theoretical and technical innovation – is “4D Design: Spatial, Material and Constructional drawing”, it is critical here to clarify what is meant by the 4-dimensional drawing.
The 4-dimensional drawing is embedded within the act of construction itself, and is an integral principle of the way in which a masonry structure (as opposed to any other type of construction) is built by craftsmen. Now, all sorts of constructional methods involve a registration of sorts so that building components ‘line up’ in their fully assembled state. But masonry is particular, insofar as the builder must ‘see a surface’ through all stages of construction, carefully laying bricks in position so that the geometry of the entire system is not compromised by a poorly placed brick which cascades into system error. This is particularly important when building with techniques derived from Spanish timbrel vaulting, where bricks are set by cantilevering into space off of the last course, and are set very rapidly on account of the use of high compressive strength and rapid-set plaster mortar. When a surface then curves into space (in two directions nonetheless), how does the mason know where each brick should be positioned so that the structural form is not lost?
Many different types of tools are used by the craftsman to ‘draw in space’ the ideal registration for a masonry surface. Mason’s line or chain, plumbs, line-levels, levels, squares, angles, templates (paper, wood, or traits), compass (or dividers) and rule. In a constructional system, certain of these tools may combine with the greatest registration tools of the mason – the hand and the eye – to systematically describe where the masonry surface wants to be in any particular position. One such system is the cintrel, a central pole with mason’s line connected at the top, which may be rotated about the pole to register bricks in the construction of a dome.
But still – these masonry tools occupy a grey zone between drawing as an act of building and building as an act of drawing.
The board below – long since the desired theme of the 4-Dimensional Masonry Construction – will come to be tested as analytical research, design and construction overlap. These examples – stereometrical drawing, Islamic Mucarnas drawing, and the ruled-surface hyperboloids of Gaudi – are drawing systems which are made to translate into a 3-dimensional space, as registration of masonry surface in the temporal act of construction. Pencil lines on paper become drawings on materials and construction surfaces, extended by the tools of the mason into space. This is the 4-dimensional drawing, a critical translator between masonry design and construction, drawing and building.
