A flat architectural world – my world of architecture as a stereo-blind individual.
I can’t tell you how I see the world differently to yourself… since I only know the world as what I see. I wasn’t aware of this difference in me for many years of my life; in fact, for most of it I was not aware of it at all (find the thread on Irlens and Stereo-blindness to learn more). All I knew was that life was hard, I had many tennis balls to the face and footballs to the head (unintentionally), I walked into and tripped over pretty much everything. Although only one of my broken arms was the result of tripping over something.
The story I want to tell now is the story of how I wanted to become an architect/designer whilst the world I see is effectively flat. I of course being born with stereo-blindness have obtained some learnt 3D vision as my brain has learnt to adapt; therefore, I am less likely to get hit in the face by a flying tennis ball these days than I used to be… that’s a real plus! I can now catch to a certain extent and I am ever so slightly more coordinated.
Now to architecture… I wasn’t really aware of how I saw architecture differently early on and in fact when I chose to do my Interior Architecture degree I wasn’t aware of the differences that would inherently impact the way I could see and approach architecture. Prior to starting this degree, I was extremely fortunate to get onto a course in interior design at Parsons School of Design in New York City (I definitely recommend this!) and I lived in NYC for a month studying this course. I learnt a lot on this course and I was extremely fortunate so I understand if it is a bit far-fetched so all I can suggest is to find a similar course closer to home; it gave me such a head start on understanding the underpinnings of becoming an architect and specific details about drafting etc.
During my first year, I had a lot of struggles relating to the environment in which I was studying as well as some other issues with a psychologically abusive tutor; this only got worse through my degree. I was completely unable to draw from life and even from images; I had a module in which drawing from pictures was essential and one which demanded quick intense sessions of drawing from life on site; both of which of course, were complete nightmares. I slowly taught myself to draw from pictures during the year which changed the way that I could get through my degree. However, despite my best efforts…, for obvious reasons I could not draw from life no matter how hard I tried. I laugh at it now but unsurprisingly my drawings would always come out flat. Despite the fact that I know how perspective works and how to draw perspective following rules; I could not apply this to the buildings that I would see in front of me and convert it to a 2D page drawn in a 3D way. Not knowing why I was just seen as a bit of disaster …the architect who can’t draw architecture from life how ironic. To deal with constant fussing from tutors and also to try and maintain a positive outlook I learnt to translate the buildings I would see and draw them as elevations, sections or plans or simply just focus on a specific detail; this often got me into trouble.
7 or so years on from this … I still can’t draw from life… I doubt I ever will but I want to learn to be confident in what I see and therefore simply draw/paint what I see and demonstrate how I see the world as my ever-loving boyfriend says… it would be fascinating for others to see the world how you see it. Maybe one day then I will get this confidence and post some of my works here; what do you think?
