The ‘Nobel’ Rafael Moneo reflects at the UPCT on drawing as an architectural language

Drawing as a logical and thinking activity, as a representation, documentation and dissemination tool, as a scalpel to dissect the city and the landscape in spatial analysis, as an architectural production technique and as a teaching discipline, around these five dimensions of the drawing 160 researchers are reflecting on this Thursday at the XIX International Congress of Architectural Graphic Expression that is being held at the School of Architecture and Building of the UPCT.

The conclave is attended by the prestigious architect Rafael Moneo Vallés, winner of the Pritzker Prize, the so-called Nobel Prize for Architecture. Moneo talks this afternoon, from 5:30 p.m., about the role of drawing and graphic expression during the architect’s training, during project production in the profession’s trade and as a tool for thinking and reflection of the architect with himself.

The congress is attended by national and international researchers and experiences of transfer and collaboration with private companies and public institutions, as well as the latest graphic technologies that are being used in the restoration of artistic and heritage assets. The Factum Arte Foundation will speak about this line of work tomorrow.

The organizing committee of the congress is made up of fifteen professors from the UPCT and directed by Manuel Ródenas. “The research and transfer strategies to society are the central axis of the debate that we will have with the Italian experts Francesca Fatta and Rosella Salerno and with the Spanish researchers Pilar Chías, Eduardo Carazo and José Calvo”, highlights Ródenas.

The first conference, under the title, was given by Professor José María Gentil, author of numerous publications on the history of illustration.

The architects trained at the UPCT are also protagonists of the congress through an exhibition of internationally awarded works, in which the graduates reflect on how they use drawing as a language.

“The drawing reflects the complex mixture of our personalities”, maintain the members of the team of architects from the UPCT who distinguished themselves in the Europan 15 international competition with their design to reconvert into leisure space a Swedish industrial area and who also won the first prize in the following edition of this contest, with an urban remodeling proposal for a Norwegian city. “The effectiveness of our drawings to convey the essence of our ideas is essential in the design process,” they add.

“I draw since I can remember. Expressing a message with a graphic gesture demonstrates the tangible nature of thought,” concludes the also graduate of the Higher Technical School of Architecture and Construction of the UPCT Vicente Rexwhose final project was selected as one of the six best and most innovative final degree projects in Spain.