IN-PERSON Prague Research & Teaching Conference

Abstract

In defining the section as an operation of spatial framing, this paper deploys the concept of décadrage (deframing) as a generative mode of critical spatial thinking in architectural pedagogy. Drawing on Robin Evans’ seminal work on stereotomy – the art of cutting solids, the research revisits his provocative assertion from 1995 that “architecture as we know it can only escape the flatness imposed by drawing through drawing.” Today, in an era dominated by digital image reproduction and layered compression, the definitions of flatness and depth have complex connotations. Contemporary architectural practice demands more nuanced representations that transcend the traditional orthographic set – plan, section, elevation. Grounded in theoretical perspectives on framing and deframing by Pascal Bonitzer, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida, their cinematic methodologies in particular, the research emerges from a Contemporary Architecture Seminar where students systematically explored strategies of “unframing” the architectural section – first manually by physically cutting and combining section drawings of iconic projects, then by analyzing a museum building they visited. The students’ work demonstrates how deliberate spatial uncertainty through deframing creates environments that disorient, surprise, and challenge conventional spatial expectations. In the final step, students engaged with Peter Eisenman’s Houses I through XI, de-framing these fixed, bounded interiors into ambiguous, transitional zones. These analyses reveal three rules of décadrage: phenomena of simultaneity, fictional speculation, and digital hybridity, demonstrating how deframing challenges our conceptualization of architectural space – suggesting contemporary architectural section as a dynamic, responsive, and continuously negotiated drawing.