160 How the line became straight

into the backgrounds that they const itute. We often fa il to notice them. Yet they remain in tegral to many of the surfaces on o r around which life in the built environment is conducted. Think of lines of paving, of bricklaying, o f floo rboa rds, even of wallpaper - the lines where stri ps adjoin are st ill there, even though interior decorators do their best to hide them! Or the lines of seating in a railway ca rriage, airc raft fuselage o r aud itorium. We use guidelines, too, to convert an ex isting surface into a fie ld of act ion , as when they are pa inted on grass to create a racetrack or a tenn is court. Just like the rules and margins that still appear in school exerc ise books, these lines present no physical barrie r to movement, but nevertheless entail consequences- more or less dire - should they be crossed.

Before leaving the subject of guidelines and plo tlines, a wo rd should be sa id about roads, railways and canals, for it seems there are two senses in which such channels of commun ication can be understood. On the one hand they are plotli nes in themselves, joining specific locations by a route that pre-exists the traffic that flows between them. On the other hand , the asphalt o f the road, the tracks of the railway and the breadth of the canal form surfaces over which vehicles (cars, trains, barges) move, and these surfaces are themselves consti tuted by guidelines that can be more o r less constraining. Twin dr ivers, fortunately, do no t have to steer, but bargemen and motorists do: the former within limits determined by the canal banks, the latter observ­ing lines painted down the centre of the road as well as on each side. The centre line sepa r;~tes oncoming and outgoing traHic, and to drive 'o n the wrong s ide' is to precipitate an accident. But it is still possible - if dangerous - for the moto rist to cross over, such as when overtaking. In eve ry case, however, whether we see a channel of communicat ion as a plotline or as a set o f guidelines depends on whether we focus on its co mmunicative aspect, of 'going from A to B', o r its channelling aspect, of guid ing movement over a surface.

Using a ruler

A ruler is a sovereign who controls and governs a territory. It is also an instrument fo r drawing stmight lines. These two usages, as we have already hinted, are closely connected. In establishing the te rritory as his to control , the ru ler lays d own guidelines fo r its inhabitants to fo llow. And in his polit­ical judgements and strategic decisions - his rul ings - he plots the course of action they should take. As in the territory so also on the page, the ru ler has been employed in drawing li nes o f both kinds.

For centuries, scribes used r ulers for scor ing guidelines on parchment or paper, while surveyors and navigators used them fo r drawing plo tlines on diagrams and charts. With the development o f p rint ing the fo rmer use has been rendered more o r less obsolete, s ince notepaper, graph paper and manuscript pape r now all come ready ru led . Every schoolchi ld , however, must include a ruler in his or her 'geometry set' , for use in constructing

HoH• the I ine became straight 161

figures, tables and graphs. Moreover the ruler remains an essential part of the too lkit fo r the navigator or surveyor. And ever since architects and engineers ceased to l'e masters among builders and mechanics, moving off-site to become 'gentlemanly' designers of structures for artisans of lower ratus to assemble or put up, the ruler has become essential to their toolkit too. 2 The sociologist of science David Turnbull , in a now classic art icle, has shown how, throughout the Middle Ages, the des igns for majo r monuments such as cathcd rals were nor drawn up in advance but improvised on-site. Lines were druwn in the earth itself or stretched with string, at full scale, o r incised directly on to muterials by means of templates (Turnbull 1993). Only when the architect ceased to be a master-bu ilder und ret reated to the drawing­board were templates replaced by the ruler, and taut threads by the ruled traces o f the diagram. From that time on , builders were no longer ruled by the architect in person but by the straightness of his lines, on plans and specifications nowadays backed by force of law and contractual obligation.

The act of drawing a line with a ruler is ostensibly quite diffe rent from that of drawing it freehand. As John Ruskin noted . no free hand - not even the best trained - can ever dra\\' a line that is without any curvature or variety of direction. 'A g reat draughtsman can ', he observed, 'draw every line but a straight one.' Fo r this reason Ruskin thought it futile for novices to practise drawing straight lines. \Vhat is the point, when this is the one thing that no draughtsman can o r should ever be able to do? In order to train novices to an accurate perception of the relations between straight lines and cu rves, for example in the fo rms of Roman capitals, Ruskin accordingly recommended that they be allowed to use a ru le (Ruskin 1904: 38). In his book The NatuTe and Art of \X/orlonanship, theorist of des ign David Pyc arrives at a rather sim ilar conclusion, by way of a d istinction between what he calls the 'wo rk­manship of ris k' and the 'workmanship o f certainty' . In the workmanship of risk , the result is not pre-determined but 'depends on the judgement, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as he works' (Pye I 968: 4). Thus the quality o f the ou tco me is never assured unti l the work is actually fin­ished. In the workmanship of certainty, by contrust, the result is exactl y pre­determined before the task is even begun. Thi - determination is given in the settings and specifications of the apparatus of production, which in turn contro ls the movements of the working point. The workmanship of risk, Pyc suggests, is exemplified by writing with a pen , and the wo rkmanshi p of certainty by modern printing.

In the wo rkmanship of risk, however, practitioners arc continually devis­ing ways to limit ri sk th rough the use of jigs and templates, which introduce a degree of certainty into the proceedings. Thus ' if you w<.~nt to d raw a straight] inc with your pen ', Pye advises, 'you do no t go at it freehand , but use a ruler, that is to say, a jig' (1968: 5). The difference between drawing a line freehand and with a ruler precisely parallels that between wayfari ng and transport , as explained in C hapter 3. In the first case. only when the traveller has arrived at a place can he truly be said to have fou nd his way there. All

162 How the line became straight

alo ng the trai l he has to attend to hi s path in relat ion to the ever-changing vistas and ho rizons as he proceeds. So too with your pen o r pencil : you have all the while to keep an eye on where you are going and ma ke adjust ments accordingly. That is why some degree of twisting o r bending is inevitable. In the second case, by cont rast , the traveller has alread y plo tted the ro ute prio r to setting out. To travel , then , is simply to execute the plo t. It is just the same when you draw a line with a ruler to con nect two po in ts. I3 y lin ing up the ru ler so rhut the st raight edge is in contact with bo th po ints, the trajectory of the pen nib o r pencil tip is alread y fu lly determined even befo re it has begun to draw. It is fo r this reason that we typicall y th ink of the po int-to­point connecto r as a straigh t line drawn with a ru le r. It seems as though, as soon as the ruler is taken into use, the wo rkmanship of risk intrinsic to the wayfari ng pen gives way to a wo rkmanship of certainty that goes straight to the point.

Yet in reality, things are no r that si mple. Just a t ransport can never be pe rfect but always entai ls an element of wayfa ri ng, so no line that is ever d rawn even with a ruler - can ever be pe1jectfy · traighr. A n element of risk is always involved. For o ne thing, there is the constant danger that the ruler will sl ip. Fo r another, the precise d ista nce of the line from the edge of the rule will depend on the angle at which the pen is held, wh ich is incl ined to var y in fo llowing thro ugh the manual gesture. It is difficult, too, to keep the p ressu re o n the ti p exactly constant , so that the wid th and density of the line may be inconstan t. No r can one be sure that the edge of the ruler is perfectl y st raight , as it is li kely to have been warped o r n icked by previo us wear and tear. Mo reove r, drawing the line tal<es time. It canno t be reduced to a single instant. Reflect ing o n his own architectural rrac tice o f producing axone ­metr ic projections on a d rawing-board wit h a rule and set-square, Ray Lucas obse rves that , however many times certa in actions are repeated , 'it remains essential to the process that I go thro ugh the moti ons each t ime' (Lucas 2006: 17-1-5).

Most contempo rary architects love to draw but hate to write. They always carr y pencils with them, and are constantly d oodling and sketching (Medway 1996: 3+-5). T hey draw as they think, and think as they d raw, leaving a trace or trail bo th in memo ry and on paper. No r is thei r drawi ng necessarily a solitary activit y. Often eno ugh it may take the form of a conversation in which two or more interlocuto rs take tur ns to add lines, o r to mod ify them, as an idea takes shape and is collaboratively developed (see Figure 6 . .3). Of course they often have to write as well , bu t most often this is 'writing on drawing' , where the words point to particular features of the drawn sketch . Writing, in architecture, is left for what cannot be drawn. This turns upside down the conven tion that drawing is a p ract ice o f ill ustra tio n. A rchitects do no t draw to illustrate their works, except fo r rublicity purposes o r to impress clients. Such illust rat ive drawings, often done in perspective, are known d isparagingly as 'pret ty pictures' and arc considered enti rely supe rfl uous to the architectural design process itself (Hende rson 1999:

' ,. _;;r

-· - I( / ·' · .1 tr

// /' . )../ ' ,· ··-· ' .. ~- -~-

./

;

How the line became straight 163

~--~'-~ , __ r ... ·' .

/ /.

Fig11re 6.3 Extract from a collabo rative sketch dra\\·ing made by from three to six architects working together over a four-hour period. Reproduced from Gunn (2002 : 324). Reproduced by permission of\Vendy Gunn .

164 How the line became straight

32~3). Real d rawings are works in themselves, not illustrations of works. W riting is subservient to drawing, and not the other way around.

One consequence, however, of the separation of archi tectura l design from the construction industry is that architects are required to produce drawings not only to help them in working out their ideas but also to convey precise instructions, to the builder, of what is to be done. Architectural drawings thus come in two broad kinds: sketches, made in the course of developing an idea, and specification drawings - usually done in plan, section and elevation (but not in perspective) - that di rect the builder. Whereas sketches arc done freehand, speci fi cation drawings arc precisely measured and ruled. A ruther s imilar s ituation obtains in music, as a conseq uence of the parallel separat ion of com position from perfo r mance. Composers sketch freehand as they work out their ideas, but for t he purposes of performance it is necessary to pro­d uce a score on which the composer's requirements arc exactly speci fied in te rms of the rules of the stave. ln Figures 6 .4 and 6.5 I have juxtaposed an example of an archi tectu ral sketch and one of a mus ical sketch: the first from the Portuguese architect Alva ro S iza, the second from the Czech composer Leos hnace k. Although in both cases the drawings fo ll ow notatio nal con­ventions - of pbn and elevat ion in the one case, of the stave score in the

Fig11re 6.4 S ketch for the adaptation ancl reconstruct ion of two small agricultural bui ld ings, Molcdo de M inha, Portugal, I 97 1, by Alvaro S iza. Reprod uced from Siza ( 1997: 158).

HoH' the liue bewme straight 165

Fig11re 6.5 Sketch from Janacek's last compositon. I nu•n11 th ee. Rerroduced fro m Janacek ( 1989: 68), by permission o f Marion lloyars Publi8hers.

166 How the l.ine became straight

o ther - they wo uld be of little use to the builder o r perfo rmer. Yet compared with the fo rmally ru led , straight li nes of the specitication drawing or the printed score, these sketches convey a powerful sense of movement. The building in the one case and the music in the other seem to be alive on the page. These lines are active, in Paul Klee's sense. T hey go o ut for a walk .

Why sho uld meandering lines drawn freehand look so much more life- like and realistic than lines drawn with a r ule, even when they dep ict what should be straight edges in an environment? One answer is that, whereas the abst ract geometr ical line, in the depictio n of an edge, represents the juncti on of two planes , an actual edge in the bu ilt environment is fo rmed by the junction of two surface s. As James G ibson pointed out in his work on the psychology of visual perception , surface and plane are very different things. T he geometric p lane - 'a very th in sheet in space' - is but the insubstant ial ghost o f the real surface - 'an interface between a mediu m and a substance' (1 979: 35). The mediu m is usually air, but the substance can be any solid material f rom which buildings are made, or that of the gro und itself. In the environment we perceive edges as edges, not as lines, and however sharp they may be (no real edge can be perfectly sha rp, just as no real line can be perfect ly straight) , this perception is always inflected by the characterist ic textures of adjoining surfaces. A freehand line can convey something of this texture, whereas a ruled line canno t. !3ut a second answer may be still more sign iti cant. It is that in real life, us I have already shown in Chapter 3, we perceive the environment no t from a stationar y point, nor from a succes­sion of such po ints, but in the course of o ur movement along vvhat G ibson call s 'a /Jath o f observatio n ' (ibid.: 197). In the freehand sketch, the move­ment of the observer relative to a statio nary feat ure is translated into the movemen t of the line depict ing that feature re lat ive to a v iewer who is now stat iona ry.

I have not dwelt upon the impacts o f the co mputer in such field s as engin­eering des ign, mus ical composit ion and architecture, and am happy to leave speculatio n on these matters to others mo re competent than myself. Suftice it to say that one of the consequences of computer-assisted design (CAD), as Wendy Gunn has shown in a study o f the effects of introducing CAD into the des ign processes o f a nu mber o f architectural p ractices in Norway, may be to eliminate the hand-drawn sketch (G unn 2002). The co mputer enables the designer to generate ncar-perfect o rthogonal or perspectival project ions - even mo re perfect than traditional hand-drafted speciticution drawings ­which can be as precise and detailed as you like. The lines of these projec­t ions arc neither drawn no r ruled; indeed they em body no movement or gestmc of an y kind. Each is rather the geometr icall y configured o utput o f an instan taneous computati on. T hese lines can be mod ified at will , at any stage in the design process. Un like sketchi ng, however, CAD leaves no trace of these modifications o r o f the many hands that cont r ibuted to them. Printed o ut , a computer-generated diagram is complete in itself. O f course you can change the design and print it again, but each print-out is a new drawing, no t

Hou• che I ine became straight 167

a moment in the evolution of a still-growing one. Whereas the sketch embodies its history on a single sheet, you can only reconstruct the history of a CAD proce s by stacking a whole pile of sheets in genealogical sequence (ibid.: 32-l 7).

Breaking up

I began with the observation that the straight line has become an icon of modernity. It offers reason, certainty, authority, n sense of direction. Too often in the twent ieth century, however, reason has been shown to work in profound ly ir rational ways, certainties have bred fractious conflic-t, authority has been revealed as the mCtsk of intolerance and oppression, and directions have been confounded in a maze of dead ends. The line, it seems, has been broken into fragments. If the straight line was an icon of modernity, then the fragme nted line seems to be emerging as an equally powerful icon of postmodernity. This is anything but a reversion to the meandering line of wayfaring. Where the latter goes along, from place to place, the fragmenred, postmodern line goes across: not however stage by stage, from one destin­ation to the next, but from one point of rupture to another. These points are not locations but dislocations. segments o ut of joint. To put it in terms suggested by Kenneth Olwig, the line of wayfaring, accomplished through the practices of dwelling and the ci rcuitous movements they entail, is wpian; the straight line of modernity, driven by a grand narrative of progressive advance, is wopian; the fragmented line of postmodernity is dyswpian. ' Perhaps it is time', O lwigwrites. 'we moved beyond modernism's rnopianism and postmodernism 's dy.1wpianism to a wpianism that recognizes that human beings, as creatures of history, consciously and unconsciously c reate places' (Oiwig 2002: 52- 3).

In Figures 6.6 and 6. 7 l reproduce two examples of the fragme nted line, taken respectively from architecture and music. They may perhaps be com­pared with the two sketches reproduced in Figures 6..+ and 6. 5. The firs t example shows the ground-floor plan of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. The second is from a piece for twelve male voices entitled Siciliano by the Ital ian composer Sylvano Bussotti. In fact a musical analogy lies at the heart of Libeskind's work, and his original competition entry. entitled Between rile Lines, was submi tted on manuscript paper with the text literally between the lines of the five-line stave. Libeskind explains that his choice of title for the project \\'as based on the idea that it is about 'two lines of thinking, organization, and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments; the other is a tortuous line, but con­tinu ing indefinitely' (Libeskind 200 I: 23). This explanation can be taken as a paradigmatic summation of both the cala mities of modern history and the irrepressible potential of life to find a way through, and to keep on going, even under the most trying of circumstances. Indeed fragmentation can be read posit ively in so far as it opens up passages - albeit unconventional