ABSTRACT
Architect’s drawing tools derive from building construction tools. Long called mathematical instruments, they contain knowledge of geometry. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas developed the instrumental cause to explain their productive role by theorizing animate instruments. Just as the hand moves the pen, so sometimes does the pen move the hand. The drawing as a site of exception suspends ordinary laws to explain how the drawing can know more than the drafter. While Nelson Goodman considers architectural drawings attenuated where only certain aspects of a drawing are meaningful, they are in fact replete because their material and modes of making provide added levels of significance. If we draw as we build, manipulation of drawing materials can inspire the manipulation of building materials. Two drawing media are considered. The material imagination of charcoal is traced in the work of Bernard Maybeck and Louis Kahn. The lead pencil’s ability to inspire material thinking is exemplified by the work of Louis Sullivan and Paul Rudolf.
