1985 Master of Architecture
Madeleine Sanchez

Throughout my studies, drawing has been essential in documentation, analysis, and design. It has been a tool, a means for expressing an idea about a building, a space, or figures in space. I am interested in exploring drawing as a way of seeing. I want to see. I have read about architecture, heard about architecture, looked at images of architecture. I now simply need to see real buildings.

What does it mean to see? I believe that through drawing, one sees. In the past, drawing a building has heightened the experience and intensified the study. While drawing, I am forced to observe, developing my sensibility and the base of experiences from which I will invent.

Two levels of drawing will be explored. One documents. The other becomes more than mere representation and attempts to capture the spirit of the building. Each drawing abstracts the physical condition in order to transform that which I readily see to that which I have not yet seen; the familiar to the unfamiliar.

It is this beginning with the seemingly familiar and moving to the unfamiliar, the anticipated to the unexpected, which has become the theme of my travels. I will begin with the one city that I have grown to know the most through my studies, Rome. I would then begin a journey to India, along the Mediterranean, Aegean, Red, and Arabian Seas. A voyage by ship permits time to reflect, to go at it with depth, approaching places that are progressively less and less familiar to me. These include, Greece, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, and Oman.

After intuitively deciding on India, I anxiously began to research Indian architecture and culture. However, I stopped myself, sensing that in this way I will learn to see without knowing, without reservation, without expectation.