Design & Graphic Palimpsest: [Dialogue-Discourse-Discussion]

CHAPTER
05
CHAPTER 05 Paper Sessions E1, E2, E3
Session E1. Digital Exploration: Methods and Application

Digital Joinery: Representational Techniques in the Absence of Space

Stephen Belton & Lee-Su Huang | University of Florida

Laser Scanning the Aiken-Rhett Historic Parlors for Multi-Modal Documentation and Interpretation
Amalia Leifeste, Katherine Pemberton, Mark Scara & Jay White | Clemson University

Jivā: Computing the living

Parantap Bhatt & Jayant Khanuja | CEPT University, Synth lab, Mississauga, Canada

Focus Devices in Hybrid Data: Usefulness in Design Thinking and Communication

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Rob Snyder | Bentley Systems
Mark O’Bryan | University of Kentucky
Hugo Mulder | IT University Copenhagen
Stéphane Côté | Bentley Systems

Session E2. Visualization, Analysis, and Interpretation

Education in Architectural Analysis through Hybrid Graphical Means: a Setup for Critical Thinking
Denis Derycke & David Lo Buglio | Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) – Belgium

Generate Spatial Form from Visualization and Analysis

Wang Li, Mingxue Huang & Jin Feng | Lawrence Technological University

Drawing Formal Massing Studies as *archiMedia* in AFConline

Eric Inglert | University of Cincinnati

Slowing Down ‘High-Speed’ Digital Drawing Tools:Heuristic Techniques through Multiplicity, Seriality and Reversibility
Tim Frank | Southern Polytechnic State University

Session E3. Media Convergence: Manual/Tactile/Digital

An Iterative Palimpsest: Testing algorithms as a vehicle for new complexities and patterns in composition
Lohren Deeg & Rochelle Jansing | Ball State University

Rule-Based Palimpsests
Dustin Headley | Kansas State University

Modeling Beyond Representation and Communication: Teaching Novice Designers to use Physical Architectural
Models for Creative Purposes
Michael McGlynn | Kansas State University
Martin Stellingwerff | TU Delft, The Netherlands

Design Communication Association


Digital Joinery: Representational Techniques in the Absence of Space
Stephen Belton & Lee-Su Huang | University of Florida
This paper explores and discusses representational
techniques as they are employed in the conception,
fabrication, and communication of a series of wood
joints fabricated using a 3-axis CNC mill. Precedents in
medical imaging, biological illustration, and industrial
design representation are presented and discussed
as traditions on which to build an understanding of
techniques. Hand, digital, and photo collage techniques
are all utilized at different points in the process as
appropriate to the communicative task at hand, what
is attempting to be communicated, and the audience
involved. The process and the communicative
techniques evolve from the searching and speculating
through drawing, to techniques to verify and test, to
the representation of processes and material logics to a
larger audience. Finally, the implications for the larger
scale of architecture are revisited and speculated upon
through several allied projects.
Introduction: Wood Joinery
Within the scales of architecture, the joint occupies
a transitional role: it is the detail that bookends the
smaller scale and articulation of material logics, and
in so doing makes linkages with furniture and other
design disciplines operating at this smaller scale. Wood
joinery in particular operates from a rather different
premise than the larger scale of architecture, concerned
as it is with the interrelation of form and space: the
effectiveness of the wood joint lies largely in the
absence of space. Strength is directly proportional to
the maximization of the boundary condition between
separate masses. This critical difference poses
separate challenges and opportunities for the role of
representation in joinery: how may representational
techniques play a role in understanding what is at its
heart an opaque construct? In turn, how do more recent
digital processes of fabrication present new logics for
communication?
Representing Form and Analog Processes
Traditional wood joinery manuals, concerned as they
are with a purely didactic role, focus on illustrating
Design & Graphic Palimpsest: [Dialogue-Discourse-Discussion]
Digital Exploration: Methods and Application
session E1
the form and process of established joint typologies.
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These two primary illustration goals – process and
finished joint – foster a vocabulary of representational
techniques for each purpose. Process is communicated
by a photographed or illustrated sequence of steps
using a vast array of hand and power tools and setups
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(clamps, blocks, and jigs). Emphasis is placed
upon the tools and setups and their orientation in
3-dimensional space with respect to the material that is
being worked upon. In contrast, the finished joint needs
to be represented in the geometry and relation of parts-
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to-whole in three-dimensional space. A combination
of photography and 3d technical drawing standards
– shading, hidden line, extrusion and extension lines
– are employed, often in multiple representations, to
assist in a mental reconstruction. For many joints
these techniques are sufficient, though as the geometric
complexity of the joint increases these techniques start
to break down (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Joinery illustration conventions (lineweight,
shading, hidden line) and the breakdown in legibility
with greater complexity.
Images: Rogowski, Gary. 2002. The complete
illustrated guide to joinery. Newtown, CT: Taunton
Press.
Seike, Kiyoshi, Yuriko Yobuko, and Rebecca M.
Davis. 1977. The art of Japanese joinery. New York: J.
Weatherhill.
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 2014 Design Communication Conference
Because of these challenges it is useful to look
outside the field of architecture proper to precedents
in other allied fields. As Brian Kelly writes in
surveying medical imagery, in seeking to increase the
Digital Exploration: Methods and Application
communicative power of their designs, “for the greater
part of the post-Renaissance profession, architects
have appropriated techniques of documenting and
projecting from sources outside of the profession as
a means to better clarify architectural form and space
while serving to enhance its legibility, complexity, and
precision” (Kelley, p.1). With respect to representation
of the form and process of joinery, fields such as
medical imaging, biological illustration, and industrial
design share a challenge in representing complexity
born out of density and/or a multiplicity of assembly.
With an analysis of examples in these allied fields we
may revisit the question of representing the joint, both
in its internal relational geometry and the particular
way in which it is fabricated digitally.
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It is useful here to introduce the distinction made
by Nelson Goodman in mapping artistic disciplines
between representation and notation as complementary
forms of communication, in this case drawing. The
representational may be understood as mimetic while
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the notational, in contrast, as a set of codes or scripts,
such as a musical score. Architecture, as Nelson
describes, is curious in that it relies on both forms of
communication. As posited by Stan Allen in describing
Goodman’s “curious mixture” that is the architect’s
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drawings, “theories of architectural representation
based on resemblance, which derive from the visual
arts and trace their origin back to classical ideas of
mimesis, are inadequate to understand the full range
of architecture’s techniques. Theories of notation,
on the other hand, arise in two related areas: in
mathematics (where they describe abstract quantities,
and relationships), and in time-based art forms such as
music or dance” (1). There are two observations here
that are particularly useful for the present study. One
is the general applicability of hybrid techniques given
the challenges of communicating the dense constructs
of joinery. Two, the use of the notational is particularly
useful in describing joinery produced through digital
Figure 2. The X-ray and the CAT scan. Images: left/Nick Veasey, right/Weiss Manfredi Architects
Host School: Architecture Deptartment Southern Polytechnic State University Georgia
means over time as a process.
Medicine
Among the numerous representational techniques
developed in medicine as a tool to look within, perhaps
none has had more influence than the X-ray. The X-ray
allows for a non-invasive means to map the interior of
the body based upon the varying densities of matter
as they absorb electromagnetic radiation (2). The
resultant image introduces a simultaneity between
interior and exterior, form and structure, and holds
them in balance. In tracing the influence of medical
imaging upon architecture, Beatriz Colomina points
out that the X-ray is more than simply an image of
the body’s interior, but rather “it is an image of the
body being imaged” (3). And what the X-ray was for
20th century modernist architects, the Computer Axial
Tomography (CAT) scan may be for architecture at
the turn of the 21st century. The CAT scan takes the
X-ray one step further: instead of a single image that
has collapsed various depths and interior and exterior,
a dense series of sections are taken that then may
be mounted in literal or virtual 3-dimensional space
to reveal the internal organs. “The crust, skin, or
envelope becomes an almost invisible line,” Colomina
writes, “what matters is the dense interior, which is
rendered like a new, more complex kind of façade.” (4)
(Figure 2).
Buckminster Fuller also used an X-ray overlay
technique to simultaneously convey the technical
and experiential aspects of his designs. Since the
1933 Dymaxion car was engineered for aerodynamic
efficiency, the design was mostly smooth and bulbous
with minimal disruption of the primary surface
continuity. Most notably in his illustrations for the
Dymaxion car that are part of the Inventions: Twelve
around One portfolio collection, there are several
normative top/elevation views of the car in addition
to a series of sections taken at different points along
the longitudinal axis of the car. However, the main
image is an perspective elevation of the car overlaid
with a technical drawing in white linework which
gives it the X-ray effect, showing internal components
in relationship to the smooth surface of the car. The
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Digital Exploration: Methods and Application

Figure 3. Dymaxion Car and Dymaxion Deployment Unit. Images from Inventions: Twelve around One,
Buckminster Fuller
same method is employed in an elevation image of his the building’s thickened and dense epidermis: “the
Dymaxion House Deployment Unit, combining both studies are limited, accordingly, to those areas of the
qualitative and quantitative information into the same highest tectonic density: the different points of entry

image (Figure 3).
Construct as Specimen
Daniel Castor’s drawings of Henrik Berlage’s
Exchange in Amsterdam owe much of their unique
qualities to their instrumentalism in helping to
Session E1
that fold and stitch the fabric of the façade into the
spaces immediately behind it” (8). While attempting
to provide dual readings in three-dimensional space,
the techniques that allow for this ‘double-reading’
as Castor calls it relate to figure-ground drawings
as popularized by Gestalt theory and similar optical

Chapter
understand the building through the very act of phenomena. Now instead of edge conditions and
drawing. Though the drawings document a built the reversibility between two-dimensional figure and
artifact rather than a novel design conception, there is ground shapes, various layers and forms reside and
a high degree of experiment and discovery in them. overlap in space in a delicate balance that allows both
The techniques Castor comes to rely upon share to be made legible.

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much affinity with both the medical and biological
fields, including his first failed experiment: “the Industrial Design
drawing appears like a work-in-progress, but was in As the Industrial Revolution enabled mass production,
fact euthanized long ago. It functions like a botched to facilitate manufacturing processes engineers and
dissection, which can serve the student of anatomy of industrial designers relied on highly technical and
what not to do” (5). The most consistent technique unambiguous engineering drawing conventions to
Castor develops in his series is the selective use of convey information as fact. Their purpose was to
shading and transparency to simultaneously read communicate not only geometry, but also dimensions
multiple depths of the building’s layers. The drawings and tolerances (9); while these drawings can be
“might have been called X ray” he writes, but he
instead settles upon a biological correspondence in the
jellyfish, and reprints a full plate from the naturalist
Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms of Nature as reference (6).
Castor points to two specific visual characteristics of
the jellyfish’s physiology that make it a guide to his
representational techniques: it’s transparency and its
reversibility: “Because it is transparent, the parts of a
jellyfish appear simultaneously like solids and voids.
Like the ‘negative’ isometric drawings, the ‘space’ of
its body appears in reverse; but unlike the ‘negative’,
it is transparent rather than opaque, and so exhibits a
double-reading of solid and void.” (7) (Figure 4).

That Castor’s techniques share an affinity with the

fields of industrial design, biology, medicine and in
turn joinery has much to do with his subject matter.
Berlage’s Exchange is a dense mass of masonry that
from the exterior appears as impenetrable as a fortress, Figure 4. One of Castor’s ‘jellyfish’ drawings of
and Castor’s focus is not upon the grand spaces Berlage’s Exchange
of the trading floors that lie deep within but rather

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 2014 Design Communication Conference
subjectively appreciated aesthetically due to their
complexity and precision, because of this predilection
as a precise and unambiguous visual language they are
more notational than representational. While it is easy
to draw the correlation between the engineering 3-view
Digital Exploration: Methods and Application
drawing and the architectural drawing convention
of plans and elevations, more interesting are the
techniques used to convey complex assemblies. Shop
assembly manuals for car engines, for example, are full
of exploded view diagrams. These drawings “shows
the mating relationships of parts, subassemblies, and
higher assemblies” while also depicting “the sequence
of assembling or disassembling the detail parts” (10).
By separating the components a certain distance from
each other in space, the drawing is able to depict
relational alignments as well as assembly order of an
otherwise impossibly dense mechanical assembly.
Injection molded plastic models are produced
initially as a contiguous material part with the
sprue tree supporting a series of interrelated parts.
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Japanese humanoid robot models are a particularly
good example. These parts are assembled in highly
intricate sequential steps, while precision engineered
joints and locking mechanisms create movable and
posable robot models that are very dense with a high
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amount of interior detail and structure. The assembly
instruction booklets are also very densely illustrated,
highly specific, and can run 20-30 pages long. Many
of the mechanisms are concealed beneath the outer
shell of the model, only to be exposed when moved
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to certain angles. It can be argued that a substantial
portion of the modeling experience is spent on the
internal mechanisms, and that the simplicity of the
exterior belies the complexity of what is underneath.
To that end, companies have also released products
with colored translucent plastic parts, so that the
inner workings and mechanics might be indexed
and conveyed even in the absence of space. These
models can be considered the 3-dimensional physical
analogues of the Castor jellyfish drawings (Figure 5).
Joinery - Digital Processes
Figure 5. Plastic injection model sprue, Assembly instructions, Translucent humanoid robot model Images:
Bandai Co.
Host School: Architecture Deptartment Southern Polytechnic State University Georgia
In order to consider the efficacy of various
representational techniques, it is useful to consider the
fabrication processes involved. When we examine
current prevalent modes of digital fabrication methods,
the process employed falls largely into one of two
categories: additive and subtractive manufacturing.
While the fundamental premise of both technologies
differ greatly, the method in which spatial coordinates
are programmed to drive the precision movements
of machinery (G-code) are remarkably similar. The
series of spatial coordinates are sequentially linked
together into trajectories (toolpaths) that delineate the
paths programmed by the sequence. Depending on the
process in question, the toolpaths are further codified
with information relevant to the material outcome.
For additive processes (ex: FDM fused deposition
modeling), further information regarding the speed and
nozzle extrusion rates of the material to be deposited
are layered on to control the thickness and ultimately
resolution of the finished product. The generation of
these trajectories largely rely on boundary detection
algorithms of the 3d mesh to be printed (often referred
to as slicing, similar to a contouring process), as well
as additional infill structure or support material deemed
necessary depending on the geometry being printed.
In the case of subtractive processes (ex: CNC milling),
spindle speed (in RPM) and direction (clockwise
or counter-clockwise) as well as feed rate (inches
per minute) are the relevant overlays of information
pertaining to the qualitative material properties of the
final result. Since the process involves cutting into
pre-manufactured stock industrial or natural materials,
material type and thickness factor majorly into the
configuration of toolpaths employed to achieve a
certain finish. These toolpaths are generated from
control geometries such as curves or surfaces, while
the output texture is determined by the cutting profile
of end mill geometry used. Because of the prevalence
of horizontal and/or parallel toolpaths, the toolpath
diagrams share an affinity with CAT scan imaging in
both the density of the section spacing and how closely
the control geometry form is traced.

Figure 6. Various notational and representational
techniques used to document several of the joint
studies. Image: by authors
In keeping with its conceptual nature, the process
of wood joinery occupies a curious middle ground
between these two opposite poles of fabricating:
the joint itself implies the addition of two or more
pieces - an additive process - yet the preparation of
each of the pieces to be joined is almost exclusively a
subtractive process of removing material – in this case
wood – from larger linear, planar or volumetric pieces.
The subtractive preparation of each piece thereby
foreshadows the future additive process, and the joint
itself may be seen to reside in this in-between state.
Positive and negative become interchangeable in the
final realized assembly as the ground of one piece is
filled by the figure of one or more others (Figure 6).
As central as the volumetric geometry is to
understanding the joint in three-dimensional space,
a focus on this property alone misses the more
fundamental relationship of surfaces in three-
dimensional space. In both the design and execution
of wood joinery, structural integrity depends on the
maximization, articulation, and alignment of contact
surfaces in order to transfer forces and minimize
stresses. Representational techniques that are able
Figure 7. Toolpath diagrams become largely notational in transmitting a maximum of information through both
graphics and text. Image: by authors.
Design & Graphic Palimpsest: [Dialogue-Discourse-Discussion]
to penetrate this density and illustrate the internal
relationship of forms to surfaces convey the essential
nature of the joint. The challenge becomes one of how
to represent the geometric articulation and physical
relations, and do so in a systematic way that allows
Digital Exploration: Methods and Application
comparisons and contrasts to be made between and
among various joinery solutions.
Once conceived and tested, the fabrication process of
digital joinery is also qualitatively different from an
analog approach, and the techniques of communicating
this process of making fundamentally change.
Rather than relying on the representation of a series
of disjointed steps involving physical assemblies
(tools), the comprehensiveness of the milling process
allows for the tool to recede. Representation instead
becomes a sequential series of trajectories in three-
dimensional space in relation to the material (Figure
7). Bruno Latour writes of this when he states “when
a machine runs efficiently… one need focus only
on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal
Session E1
complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science
and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure
they become.”(11) Though the whole CNC mill may
correctly be referred to as a tool in the most essential
meaning of the word, the term has come to refer
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colloquially more specifically to the multitude of drill
bits or other devices mounted at the end of a computer-
numerically-controlled spindle and gantry. We are able
to focus on the relationship of drill bit specifications
and their relationship to the material, and let the rest of
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the apparatus disappear.
Representing the 4th Dimension
Of particular note is the relationship between time
(speed) and its impact on the material outcome of
both analog and digital processes, and in turn their
representation. With analogue joinery techniques
time is only indirectly implied in representations
through the number and complexity of steps depicted.
Indeed the true amount of time depends greatly on the
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 2014 Design Communication Conference
craftperson’s skill and experience. In the case of the
CNC router the number and length of the toolpaths
similarly imply but do not adequately represent time,
something that is critical in regards to the resolution
and finish of the output. Digital methods nevertheless
Digital Exploration: Methods and Application
make this feedback information readily accessible
through both toolpath simulations and time calculations
broken down for each cut, and such information may
be annotated or otherwise graphically presented. In
this case the highly precise calculation of time accounts
for only the execution of the joinery pieces (the
subtractive process) and not for the conceptualization,
definition, and ultimate assembly that cannot be
accounted for so precisely.
Implications for Architectural Design and
Representation
Notably, the High-Tech architectural movement in
the 1970s employed a mixture of the aforementioned
techniques as a way of linking both the conceptual
and aesthetic origins with industrial processes the
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movement identified with, as well as conveying
the larger assemblage of parts that comprised these
buildings. Compared to the monolithic edifices of
earlier eras, these projects were often lightweight,
layered assemblies with distinct components that
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shared more similarities (at least in image if not
function) to mechanical assemblies such as car engines
and gantry cranes.
The 1982 Renault Distribution Centre project by
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Foster+Partners uses an axonometric cutaway drawing
to expose the 24x24 meter structural bay’s component
layers, from the foundation footings, elevated floor
beams, up to the tubular masts, steel arches, and
membrane roof. These elements are shown in their
“anatomically correct” spatial positions that reinforces
the relational positioning of components while giving
an accurate sense of spatial dimensions and context.
A second drawing shows the assembly exploded and
removed to depict the individual structural elements
Figure 8. Prague National Library Competition Drawings Image: Jan Kaplicky/Future Systems
Host School: Architecture Deptartment Southern Polytechnic State University Georgia
of the mast and arches as well as the facade elements.
While the first drawing is centered around the structural
bay logic of a single mast, the second is focused on the
assembly of the facade and arch between two masts.
Norman Foster has continued to use these techniques
not only in the final descriptive representation of
a project but as communication tools to aid the
organizational representation of the project. The firm’s
competition stage drawing of the Beijing International
Airport Terminal 3 completed in 2008 utilizes the
cutaway technique to expose the different levels of
the arrival and departure concourse, their respective
automobile dropoff zones, as well as the parking levels
and pedestrian circulation routes. UK architects Ushida
Findlay, known for their organic designs in a pre-digital
age, employed a representational technique not unlike
Castor’s jellyfish drawings for their 1993 Truss Wall
House in Tokyo.
As recent contemporary architectural trends have
continued emphasis on the building envelope as well as
skin and surface effects, the increasing complexity of
facade assemblies has focused much of the architect’s
energy into the collapsed zone between interior
and exterior. Similar to the way CNC toolpaths are
collapsed very densely into a thin zone of space,
these facade assemblies also benefit greatly from
the multivarious methods of representation explored
previously. These are not only used to explain the
component parts of the skin assembly itself, but more
importantly the complex surface geometry necessitates
exploration of the relationship between the skin and
the enclosed space. As such these drawings are used
as a tool to not only quantitatively depict how the
skin is constructed, but also qualitatively explore
the spatial relationship and effect. Jan Kaplicky’s
(Future Systems) controversial 2007 winnning
competition proposal for the Prague National Library
is one such example that leverages multiple modes of
representation to convey the project’s quantitative and
qualitative properties. The drawings present a mixture

of plans, sections, and perspectives in the traditional
orthographic conventions; however additionally a
series of hybrid drawings round out the presentation.
Section perspective cutaway drawings, perspective
renderings with internal floor slabs exposed in the style
of jellyfish drawings, and exploded organizational
diagrams that delineate programmatic distribution
with circulation serve to convey the complex spatial
relationship between the sculptural 3-dimensional skin
and the enclosed space within (Figure 8).
Conclusion
The philosopher Nelson Goodman categorizes art
practices broadly into two types – autographic and
allographic(12). Stan Allen teases out the implications
of Nelson’s categories as they apply to architecture
in general and architectural representation more
specifically as something that is simultaneously
notational and representational. While it was previously
argued that wood joinery occupies a curious middle
ground between additive and subtractive process,
digital joinery similarly occupies a curious middle
ground between representational and notational. The
coding of the toolpaths can be considered notational
to the extent that as a set of instructions it can be
followed and reproduced. However, the base geometry
off of which the toolpaths are generated can be
interpreted in any number of ways, combining any
number of toolpaths, and eventually yielding different
results, sharing the same conceptual affinity with
a musical score and the musician’s interpretation.
The joint, the car engine, the contemporary facade
assembly. and the layered toolpaths all share the
same representational predicament: the absence of
space. Therefore a multivarious approach is required,
oscillating between different methods and techniques,
hybridizing complementary forms of representation to
enable understanding of complex geometries. As Allen
posits “the technique is never neutral, and the means of
representation, the working methods of the architect,
will always condition the results” (13), these hybrid
forms of representation are ever more important and
will deeply impact contemporary architectural practice
going forward.
Design & Graphic Palimpsest: [Dialogue-Discourse-Discussion]
References/Bibliography
1. Allen, Stan. Practice: architecture, technique +
representation. (London: Routledge, 2009): 42.
2. Kelly, B. “Representational Imports”. Proceedings,
1st Annual Conference of the Association of
Architectural Educators (2013): 5. Retrieved from http://
Digital Exploration: Methods and Application
architecturaleducators.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/kelly-
2013-representing-imports.pdf
3. Colomina, Beatriz. “Skinless Architecture”. Thesis:
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der BauhausRUniversität
Weimar (2003): 124. Retrieved from http://e-pub.uni-weimar.
de/opus4/files/1254/colomina.pdf
4. Colomina, “Skinless Architecture”, 124.
5. Castor, Daniel. Drawing Berlage’s Exchange. (Rotterdam:
NAi Publishers, 1996): 15.
6. Castor, Berlage’s Exchange, 46.
7. Castor, Berlage’s Exchange, 46.
8. Castor, Berlage’s Exchange, 9.
9. French, Thomas E.; Vierck, Charles J.; et al. A manual of
engineering drawing for students and draftsmen (8th ed.),
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953): 1.
10. Walton, Thomas F. Technical Data Requirements for
Systems Engineering and Support. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
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Prentice-Hall, 1965): 170.
11. Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of
Science Studies, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1999): 304.
12. Goodman, Nelson. Languages of art: an approach to a
theory of symbols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968)
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13.Allen, Practice, 48.
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