Slow Practice -(re)drawing time. Balancing narrative, ghosts and tensions.

This PhD is an investigation into, and an interrogation of my practice through the work of Boyarsky Murphy Architects.

It explores the ephemeral and unseen aspects that influence and impact our built environment: Ghosts, Narratives, Tensions and aspects of Time.

It does this through [re]drawing & reflecting on key projects. Drawings are the instigators, the place of discussion and explorative devices for examining the processes by which I design and think about space. They form a place for evaluation which I call Slow Practice, where histories and previous occupations of a site, together with existing and inserted materialities, expectations, limitations and imagination have had the time to come to the fore and mingle. This PhD claims this slow space and explores it.

This PhD has explored the uses to which drawings are put within my practice. Besides being instructional devices and directions for the actual making of architecture by others, they are used for thinking about architecture, explaining processes and suggesting alternative approaches and scenarios. This exploration has led to new forms of drawing which includes assemblage, collections, collage and maquettes.

The research is divided into distinct and interdependent parts: drawings, texts and artefacts. All have a physical presence and their own particular format.

The texts further explore the themes Narratives, Ghosts, Tensions and Time. The Community of Practice text is an exploration of the mental space that surrounds the work and within which it is conducted, and the context of London, the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), and the groups of architects or “drawers” with whom I feel an affinity.

My dissertation a collaged narrative of practice using drawings, helped occasionally by fragments, models and booklets to unpack my narratives about practice.

This study has been an opportunity to reflect on the control that I have over the medium of the design process, which Leon van Schaik has called “mastery”. The methodology of the research has revealed not only undocumented design practice processes such as the particular way of looking at, gleaning, and recording the information from a site, but also the overlooked, forgotten and concealed aspects of buildings, building processes and the project outcomes