Sarah Hahn is an assistant professor of architecture in the College of Architecture and Planning and an architectural historian, educator, and curator. Her research broadly focuses on production procedures and protocols and representational techniques in art and architecture.
As an exhibition curator printable drawingscurrently on display at the MAK Center for Arts and Architecture in Los Angeles, Hahn explores the evolution of architectural expression as a usher in the digital revolution.
In an excerpt from Curation of Things — A Conversation with Sarah Hahn”Special feature post-Hahn writes, “My interest in drawings is to provide a counter-history of how authority has been constituted and controlled through architectural drawing sets and their reproduction and circulation. This was in the 1970s, when architectural drawings became very prominent in a series of exhibitions and many were writing about a market centered around selling drawings. It’s kind of a mixed bag because we’re trying to sort out the context. Some of them are intermediate and sometimes very elaborate drawings. They don’t necessarily communicate to the audience or to the building. Some of it was (to use Eisenman’s term a little later) more project-oriented.
“There is a sense that working in this way was close to the idea of ’architectural autonomy’ in that it was not tied to the world of real estate or development itself,” Hahn writes. “Drawings for the sake of drawings… But I also look at the ‘practical’ drawings of the time, and how artistic drawings and production drawings diverged. And office anxiety over these useless (unproductive) drawings. ”
Print-ready drawings: composites, layers, and pasting 1950-1989
A strong print culture emerged between 1950 and 1989, when architects began working with graphic media and producing drawings and collages intended for reproduction and publication. Ready to print drawing Investigate the processes behind these printed images.
Composite and mechanical documents emblematic of this era were created from graphic supplies such as photographic paper, Letraset transfer sheets, rapidograph pen sets, and other graphic templates. Featuring prints and reproductions, this exhibition explores the history of architectural authorship through the investigation and display of material supply and drawing techniques, rather than specific authors. From “Instant Picture” to “Rapid Draw” systems, the items that lined architects’ desks from mid-century reflected an obsession with speed and efficiency.
It was a time when architects were widely involved in printing and printmaking techniques, due to the rise of materials and materials that revolutionized the work of many in the graphic field. Architects worked to make their architecture printable, whether it was through the service of distributing working drawings or creating carefully stamped lithographic prints.
“The biggest takeaway is that architectural drawings have always been produced in collaboration with anonymous contributors. Perhaps more interesting in the 1970s was the sudden rush to make drawings valuable as commercial products. “The attempt has made the need to requalify artistic authorship a priority,” Hahn wrote. post-.
“The reassertion of the value of drawing, which has tended to include debates over the artistic autonomy of working on paper, is a disciplined return to architectural intelligence over the more manual aspects of architecture,” Hahn said. He continued. “But my point is that if you start looking at the tools, you’ll find stationery stores, tool manufacturers, types of paper that allow you to do certain kinds of drawings. Or you look at the institutional side. If you turn to the You start to see that it’s intertwined. You know, it’s an illusion that it wasn’t somehow that way. That’s why the 1970s is the perfect time. They created the drawings. Because we’re invested in the idea that it can be done and that it’s somehow autonomous. Architecture for architecture’s sake.”
Photo: Joshua Shadell. Courtesy of MAK Center for Arts and Architecture.
Through 12 carefully selected case studies, printable drawings Highlight these miniature paper landscapes. Their surfaces contain expressions of control such as annotation marks, enlargement instructions, manufacturer tags, watermarks, and even evidence of numerous unauthorized contributors.
It will be on display until February 4, 2024. printable drawingsThis work, presented by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, was generously funded through a Graham Grant and a Getty Foundation Paper Project grant.
printable drawings It will be supervised by Sarah Hahn, supported by Ariana Borromeo and Lauren Vardin as curatorial assistants, and MAK Center Exhibitions Team’s Seymour Polatin (Exhibitions and Program Manager) and Brian Taylor (Curatorial Assistant). This exhibition features commissioned works by Julie Riley and Jenny Leavitt. The exhibit was designed by Current Interests, and preserved by Paradise Framing. Graphic design by Christina Huang.
Beyond history
Hahn collaborated with colleague Erin Besler from Princeton University’s School of Architecture to develop the new workshop series. Beyond history, we explore provenance across a variety of research fields and collectively reconsider its urgency for the built environment. The workshop, a series of sessions to be held in late spring 2024, will incorporate remote object demonstrations and introduce inventive graduate students and faculty whose research focuses on the circulation of artifacts. We plan to bring together engineers, historians, and practitioners. Hahn and Bessler co-authored the grant through the Magic Grant for Innovation, funded by Princeton University’s Humanities Council.
About Sarah Hahn
Sarah Hahn is an architectural historian, educator, and curator. She received her PhD in architectural history at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2020 with the thesis “Other Things That Seem on Paper: The Craftsmanship of Architectural Documents and Images from 1960 to 1987” . Her career includes that she trained as an architect in Australia and practiced for several years in offices such as Atelier Jean She Nouvelle in Copenhagen and Paris. Hahn is currently an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Denver’s School of Architecture and Planning.
Hahn’s independent work includes exhibitions and symposiums on information management and exhibition in contemporary architectural research. Fieldwork (2015) at the University of Technology Sydney Gallery.she was co-curator Schindler House: 100 years old (MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2022), Architecture itself and other myths of postmodernism (Canadian Center for Architecture, 2018), and the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial with Johnston Markley, for which he co-edited the corresponding catalog. make new history, published by Lars Müller. Recently, Hahn served as guest curator for an exhibition titled; printable drawings Held at the MAK Center for Arts and Architecture, funded by the Getty Foundation Paper Project and the Graham Foundation.