“Drawing the Unseen”
Workshop convened by José Ibarra and Delphine Lewandowski (The Pennsylvania State University)
Invited guest lecture by Lydia Kallipoliti, Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design (MSAAD) at Columbia GSAPP.
Part of the 2026 Stuckeman School Symposium, “Creative Methodologies for Studying Changing Climates: Body, Space, and Weather,” held at The Pennsylvania State University on March 4–5, 2026.
Time and Place: Stuckeman School, College of Arts and Architecture, The Pennsylvania State University, Thursday, March 5, 2026, 1:30 pm–5:30 pm.
Drawing the Unseen is a 3-hour research workshop on environmental representation that treats air, light, water, biological processes, and geological forces as active co-authors. The workshop investigates how drawing can function as a situated research method for engaging environmental uncertainty across scales of body, site, and territory. Following a guest lecture by Lydia Kallipoliti, participants engage in a cadavre-exquis drawing protocol. Each participant develops a distinct environmental layer—such as atmosphere, light, water, biology, or geology—which are then collectively assembled and subjected to controlled disturbances, including directed airflow, pigment flows, misting, and condensation. Through these interventions, environmental forces actively participate in shaping the drawing. The resulting composite is a co-authored “living drawing” that registers fluidity, impermanence, and transformation over time. Rather than aiming for stable depiction, the workshop foregrounds change and instability as representational logics appropriate to climatic conditions, while articulating ethical positions toward human and nonhuman entanglements.
