• Lehigh University Anthony Viscardi drawing
     Lehigh University Anthony Viscardi drawing
  • Lehigh University Anthony Viscardi - architectural drawing
     Lehigh University Anthony Viscardi - architectural drawing
  • Lehigh University Anthony Viscardi - architectural drawing
     Lehigh University Anthony Viscardi - architectural drawing

Artist Intent

My current drawings continue my personal investigation of over 20 years into the phenomena of shadow mapping. Although this series constitutes an artistic investigation on their own merit, these drawings are also instrumental as I formulate new theoretical precepts in the creative design process as to the forming and shaping of architecture. I have consistently integrated these design precepts into my teaching pedagogy in my architectural design studios, starting in 1989 at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture and continuing to the present at Lehigh University’s Department of Art, Architecture, and Design. I am now a full professor and have been chair of my Department for over seven years. I have produced a new series of “Shadow Maps” incorporating my earlier mapping techniques but using pencil on Mylar as my medium. The drawings vary from approximately 15"x 33" to 4’ X 8’. I work with pencil on Mylar in such a way as to allow my hand to smear the graphite in the process of drawing. The graphite residue permits eraser, evoking new layers of clear Mylar that highlight against the complex pencil wireframe generated by the palimpsest of multiple shadow plays.

 

Pedagogy

In the discipline of architecture, design is a unique engagement of form, function and meaning that is realized through the act of making. I consider this to be a process based in inquiry, rather than dogma, one that retains relevance through inevitable change. As I view it, the design process addresses broad issues of concern that relate personal vision with collective responsibility, the well being of the individual and the needs of society, as well as the detail and the whole. It is inherently a slow process as it draws from these multiple sources and considerations. I became a teacher, not simply to prepare my students for entry into an established profession but, to prepare them to take an active and imaginative role in defining the way the profession of architecture can evolve to meet the future. My aim is not simply to teach the precepts of 'design' but rather to impart the idea of the 'creative design process.' This aspect of architecture proves inexhaustible as a forum for inquiry; it tends to provoke questions that inspire more profound questions that aim to move beyond utilitarian expectation to embrace the human spirit.

Tracing Time Catalog -- download here

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