There is something about the immediacy of drawing at a large size, standing in front of a drawing board that brings the quality and urgency of instant involvement with a subject in view.
Drawing at a size in relation to your body allows for the drawing not to become object, treasured in hand, at arm’s length. Rather, the direct relationship with a subject extrapolated through drawing processes and techniques brings this subject closer; it makes it somehow tangible, capable of being experienced and touched.
I use drawing to observe situations and generate an understanding through drawing.
I draw on a situation – tracing off film footage and photography, then using this to extract spatial/architectonic content – until there is an understanding of the the formal content at hand. This process of drawing on the subject and tracing aspects of it, is done by drawing iterative points of view of the subject and iterative points of view of the subsequent drawings. Every reiterated drawing is a refinement and unraveling of the compressed spatiality present in the subject. I trace and draw in modes of observation and speculation until I reach a turning point – a poiesis – where the drawing leaves its status as one thing (its representational role) to become something else. At that particular moment in the process, I can draw through the situation I am looking at. What is to be seen in the drawing is no longer visually representational of its source material, but is a mediation of inherent and observed architectonic intent.
is an architect and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research in Drawing Architecture explores the critical and generative potential of drawing beyond representation, positioning it as an epistemic and operative mode within architectural practice. She exhibits, lectures, and publishes internationally on drawing as a form of architectural research.
In 2018, she co-initiated the Drawing Architecture Collective with Arnaud Hendrickx, bringing together internationally recognised architects for a series of conversations centred on drawing as a core architectural practice. These were published in Drawing Architecture: Conversations on Contemporary Practice (Lund Humphries, 2022; eds. Dorrian, Eeckhout, Hendrickx). The collective’s work also informed AD Radical Architectural Drawing (vol. 92, 2022), edited by Neil Spiller, and more recently AD Reimagining Architectural Drawing: Print and Process (vol. 95.3, 2025), guest-edited by Dorrian, Eeckhout and Hendrickx.
Her drawings have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale; La Galerie d’Architecture, Paris; the Tchoban Foundation and the Museum of Architectural Drawing, Berlin; the Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin; the Design Centre UQAM, Montreal; Art Omi: Architecture; and A83 Gallery, New York.
There is something about the immediacy of drawing at a large size, standing in front of a drawing board that brings the quality and urgency of instant involvement with a subject in view.
Drawing at a size in relation to your body allows for the drawing not to become object, treasured in hand, at arm’s length. Rather, the direct relationship with a subject extrapolated through drawing processes and techniques brings this subject closer; it makes it somehow tangible, capable of being experienced and touched.
I use drawing to observe situations and generate an understanding through drawing.
I draw on a situation – tracing off film footage and photography, then using this to extract spatial/architectonic content – until there is an understanding of the the formal content at hand. This process of drawing on the subject and tracing aspects of it, is done by drawing iterative points of view of the subject and iterative points of view of the subsequent drawings. Every reiterated drawing is a refinement and unraveling of the compressed spatiality present in the subject. I trace and draw in modes of observation and speculation until I reach a turning point – a poiesis – where the drawing leaves its status as one thing (its representational role) to become something else. At that particular moment in the process, I can draw through the situation I am looking at. What is to be seen in the drawing is no longer visually representational of its source material, but is a mediation of inherent and observed architectonic intent.
-Riet Eeckhout
RIET EECKHOUT (M.Arch, MA, PhD)
is an architect and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research in Drawing Architecture explores the critical and generative potential of drawing beyond representation, positioning it as an epistemic and operative mode within architectural practice. She exhibits, lectures, and publishes internationally on drawing as a form of architectural research.
In 2018, she co-initiated the Drawing Architecture Collective with Arnaud Hendrickx, bringing together internationally recognised architects for a series of conversations centred on drawing as a core architectural practice. These were published in Drawing Architecture: Conversations on Contemporary Practice (Lund Humphries, 2022; eds. Dorrian, Eeckhout, Hendrickx). The collective’s work also informed AD Radical Architectural Drawing (vol. 92, 2022), edited by Neil Spiller, and more recently AD Reimagining Architectural Drawing: Print and Process (vol. 95.3, 2025), guest-edited by Dorrian, Eeckhout and Hendrickx.
Her drawings have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale; La Galerie d’Architecture, Paris; the Tchoban Foundation and the Museum of Architectural Drawing, Berlin; the Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin; the Design Centre UQAM, Montreal; Art Omi: Architecture; and A83 Gallery, New York.
Website: https://www.rieteeckhout.com/
Instagram: @riet_eeckhout
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