ABSTRACT
The Renaissance practice of disegno, to which contemporary architectural design prac-
tice remains indebted, is defined as an intellectualising form of drawing. Disegno
teaches architects, as Vasari put it, to hold that which ‘has been imagined in the intel-
lect and fabricated in the idea’.1 It is a form of tactile thinking calculated to enable archi-
tects to simultaneously fabricate and make sense of the world. What, then, are the
fortunes of this robust practice today? How might it operate in the flux and fluidity of
contemporary urban life?
