Drawing Erasure

Architectural practice is often a project in asserting control over the natural environment in pursuit of permanence and stability, but what if erasure could disrupt this? What new forms, spatial configurations, programmes, and material expressions might emerge when architectural practices are unsettled by acts of erasure? This thesis investigates erasure as both a concept and an act within architectural drawing, emphasising its generative potential through stimulating dialogues between authorial intent, material agencies, and site conditions. Situated within the broader discourse of architectural drawing—where drawing bridges conceptual thought and built form—this research frames erasure as an act of drawing rather than a metaphor for suppression or correction. The removal or smudging of a line is considered as generative as its creation, with the dynamic exchange between mark-making and erasure opening creative possibilities. This thesis asks: can erasure destabilise architecture? This question is pursued through three interconnected speculative design experiments, each increasing in scale and complexity, with insights from one woven into the next. By exploring erasure’s role in dissolving fixed forms and meanings, the research examines how drawing enables continual re-formation and reinterpretation. Through cycles of making, erasing, and remaking, the body of work in this thesis becomes a layered record of transformation, developing creative practices of erasure that embrace instability and fluidity to challenge architecture’s fixation on permanence. Extending this discussion, the thesis introduces the concept of erasing with site, where the intertwined gestures of the author and the more-than-human dissolve into one another. This builds on Donna Haraway’s notion of sympoíēsis, or making with, which rejects human-centered narratives of control and instead prioritises our entangled existence. This approach highlights the creative potential of engaging more-than-human agents in acts of making and erasing marks, advocating for participatory architectural processes that move beyond human-centered authorship. The thesis situates these themes within a broader exploration of architectural drawing as a tool for articulating ideas, fostering creative possibilities, and expanding the architect’s role. Here, the architect is not a master designer but an active participant in an interconnected web of agents, where materials and the natural environment co-author the work. Drawing becomes an act of listening and responding to site’s ephemeral and material conditions. The body of work in Drawing Erasure examines drawing as a collaborative act, where human intentionality is placed in dialogue with the agency of rocks, leaves, seaweed, tidal movements, and wind patterns—each imprinting themselves onto the creative process. Political overtones ‘haunt’ the work (Ballard, 2021), with anthropogenic impacts on site and its dynamics ever-present, and the work aligns with Donna Haraway’s expression “staying with the trouble”, encouraging us to engage with the complexities of our entangled existence in the Anthropocene (Haraway, 2016). By exploring erasure through a sensitive, reciprocal engagement with site, this research de-centers the human in creative practices, fostering care and rethinking architectural practice as an open-ended process within a broader ecological and material system.