ABSTRACT
Overdrawing is an eidetic (memory- and idea-generating) method that allows us, as landscape architects, to recall, access, and visualize the invisible processes so vital to making places. Second, overdrawing is both a method and result; it’s a method to represent, as well as the material result of the method. The need to represent conditions over a temporal spectrum is especially urgent in this time of swift climate change. When we draw over and through the photograph, we begin to expand the dimensions represented.
Overdrawings help to expand both the makers’ and viewers’ perceptions beyond the visual landscape and to integrate the multiplicities of landscapes. This chapter shows examples of the procedures and agency of overdrawings to explain their potential in the design process. I will describe and provide images of overdrawing assemblages that I use to interrogate ordinary landscapes, their temporality, and our subjective experiences within them. I will begin by describing how the method of overdrawing is done, then shift to what overdrawings do, both for the maker and the viewer. I will end by describing the power of overdrawings, all while using my own as examples. Examples include projects examining New York City’s Chinatown and vernacular strip-mall landscapes of the American West. Included in the discussion are concepts from W.J.T. Mitchell, James Corner, Juhani Pallasmaa, Perry Kulper, and Tim Ingold.
In short, overdrawings are agents, actions, and speculative devises. They are imprecise, yet provide a means to access previously unknown relationships and correlations. It is this imprecise quality that is so crucial to the eidetic qualities that unlock the in-between.
