Translations from Drawing to Seeing

This article discusses a methodological approach to linking analytical and perceptual approaches in the understanding of site and context by third year undergraduate architecture students, using the moment of the site visit as a hinge point between these two modes of thinking, documentation, and discovery. Students begin by mapping an urban site and context, and only after several iterations to develop techniques and speculate on its form and character is a site visit undertaken. The site visit allows for a new series of speculations that may challenge or further elaborate the students' previous conclusions. The process becomes non-linear and moves between the autographic and allographic. The literary dialectic between the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and Jean Baudrillard regarding the preeminence of the map versus the territory is introduced, both as a guide for the students in their analysis, and as a framework for discussing the work and process.