How to Cite: Gümbel, Alexander, Christiaan Nieman, Federico Jaramillo Gamba, Ingrid Quintana-Guerrero and Maarten Goossens. "Drawing, Materializing, Shaping Landscape: Investigative Experiences Collected at Pabellón". Dearq no. 42 (2025): 4-12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq42.2025.01
Alexander Gümbel
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Christiaan Nieman
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Federico Jaramillo Gamba
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Ingrid Quintana-Guerrero
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Maarten Goossens
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Architecture, as an academic field, has long navigated the intersections and tensions between philosophical-artistic approaches and technical-pragmatic perspectives. Today, it finds itself in a period of openness—one that reinterprets disciplinary boundaries and challenges conventional ways of producing knowledge. In a landscape where the inseparable bond between theory and practice is widely acknowledged—and where digital advancements have dramatically lowered barriers to exploration and creation—it is striking that academic writing (papers, dissertations, books) remains the predominant medium and format for presenting research. We believe that research in architecture and design can potentially be as diverse as architecture itself. There are countless other ways to conceive, question, provoke, materialize, and communicate advancements in the field.
Where, then, should a journal like Dearq—which is rooted in architecture yet actively engages with diverse approaches—turn to identify these alternative methods? What can creative disciplines such as architecture, design, and the arts learn from one another about shaping research? Our involvement in organizing the multidisciplinary event Pabellón, held in October 2023 at Universidad de los Andes, offered valuable insights into these questions. The event brought together a range of experiences and discussions, allowing us to curate a selection of the projects presented. As guest editors of Dearq, we aim to explore the emerging possibilities for research in creative disciplines within today's social and cultural landscape.
The Pabellón initiative was conceived as a space to "share creative processes in constant construction, focused on imagining practices based on the plurality and heterogeneity of discourses."1 Within this framework, it sought to explore and evaluate the expansion of the investigative field—an effort that, in Colombia, has been institutionalized by incorporating "creation" into "research" policies. However, these initiatives often continue to uphold a conceptual divide between the two. This separation presents challenges. Despite the gradual acceptance of non-conventional research methodologies, these approaches are still regarded as somewhat "other." More than just tolerating "research and creation," what is needed is a broad, inclusive, and open perspective on research—one that acknowledges its processes, habits, and outcomes, particularly when viewed as an activity with social impact (Peña, 2023).
This issue leads to a central theme of this edition of Dearq: the validation of processes and outcomes. Traditional mechanisms of research evaluation, which rely on anonymous peer review to confirm the quality of a proposal or work, have significant limitations—particularly in assessing complex, multidimensional expressions through static, two-dimensional representations. Often, peer review creates an illusion of objectivity by relying on numerical scales and averaged assessments, which mask the inadequacies of the system itself. Similarly, the validation of a single art critic or the measurement of quality through visibility and impact metrics alone proves insufficient. Instead, collective validation processes and a deliberate pursuit of plurality may offer a more meaningful approach.
As we assembled the content for this edition, the resulting collection emerged as a diverse and multifaceted set of experiences and processes. However, we identified shared characteristics among them: a state of openness, meaning an absence of a fixed intention to reach conclusions or definitive endpoints; a transdisciplinary nature, unrestricted by traditional disciplinary frameworks and methodologies; and an open-ended, nonlinear approach to organization.
We want to emphasize three key themes that emerged from our analysis of these processes and their outcomes. The first is drawing, understood as both a manual and creative act, as well as a method of recording—one that reflects a need and a procedural conviction within research. The second is direct, physical interaction with materials—in other words, materialization as a fundamental component of investigative processes. The third is the notion of landscape, not as a purely analytical or contemplative concept, but as an active space of realization and collective impact. The projects published in this issue are linked to these three themes, offering a partial and exploratory reading rather than an exhaustive or prescriptive one. The content is intentionally structured without hierarchies, balancing traditional academic formats with interviews and graphic presentations—allowing readers the freedom to develop their own interpretations.
In a fictional dialogue with Sigfried Giedion, Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto (1958) famously declared: "The Lord created paper for architectural drawings; everything else—at least for me—is a waste." Nearly seventy years later, Aalto's words still resonate in contemporary architectural education. Faced with an increasing reliance on digital design tools (BIM systems) and representation methods, many educators and students advocate for a return to analog drawing as a fundamental expression of the human imprint in the creative process. A powerful testament to this perspective is the recognition of a series of hand-drawn sketches—the travel croquis of architect Germán Samper—as the winning project in the highest category of the 29th Colombian Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, earning the National Architecture Award. The jury's statement highlights the significance of these books:
They reflect journeys, sensitivity, and talent in capturing time and space through drawings and sketches. [...] This collection of books is both a legacy and a message to all designers, underscoring the profound connection between the self and space, where the body and perception become irreplaceable forms of communication, capable of conveying the nuances and essence of each place (Colombian Society of Architects, 2024).
Drawing, therefore, serves as both an interpreter of the perceiving body and a repository of memory. Peter Zumthor, in an interview reproduced by Claudio Vergara (2008), articulates this from his own experience: "To work, to truly feel the project, I need to see it drawn on paper, scribbled with a pencil, smudged with charcoal... to shape it with my hands, slowly… every line must be drawn knowing it will become a stone wall, a wooden panel—texture, vision, space…" Beyond its sensory role, drawing also functions as a bridge to history. Emma Dexter (2005) describes this connection, "Drawing links us to our ancestors in a profound way—it is present in every trace of human activity, from Neolithic cave markings to the lines of telephone cables." This dual understanding of drawing stands in stark contrast to the growing displacement of the hand as a mediator between the mind and the blank page. While inherently imperfect, the human hand counterbalances the sterile "perfection" of generative artificial intelligence, which, in turn, reinforces biases such as reductionism, rationalization, and manipulation. As Lara (2021) argues, these biases have functioned as instruments of colonization since the earliest experiments in descriptive geometry in the 16th century.
Without intending to demonize the inevitable shift in creative practice toward the increasing integration of digital tools and artificial intelligence in everyday design workflows, it is worth reflecting on the propositions put forth by both senior and emerging designers at Pabellón 2023. Their objective: to reaffirm the role of analog drawing in two fundamental domains—creation and representation (the latter as a visual record of memory). In La utilidad de lo inútil (The usefulness of the useless), Catalina Mahé, María Luisa Vela, and Mateo Cely (2023) embrace drawing as a daily ritual, akin to keeping a journal—an exercise that allows them to escape the rigid conventions of technical drawing and instead turn to ink and paper as a refuge from the tyranny of descriptive geometry and CAD. Their drawings reveal the deeply personal and sensitive dimension of each participant, transforming into both an act of introspection and an exercise in poetic license. This poetic nature manifests in the way their hands disrupt and reinterpret the recurring motifs of architectural representation. This creative act is not a rejection of spatial conception as a fundamental principle of architectural practice. On the contrary, each drawing—despite its seemingly spontaneous nature—unfolds a universe of impossible proportions, inhabited not by rigid human scales but by fantastical beings and monstrous figures. Together, these elements construct a metaphor for alternative spaces—dreamlike, surreal, and radically different from the prevailing standards of contemporary architecture.
In Fragmentos del Ser: Collage, pensamiento e identidad (Fragments of being: collage, thought and identity), Venezuelan architecture student Pedro Marcano (2023) employs collage—a surrealist technique and a modern vehicle for visual transgression—as a cathartic tool, exploring the erasure of the human body from urban Caracas. Through the deliberate absence of human figures, the piece reflects on the irony of the city's spatial configuration: a landscape where architecture serves as a vestige of unfulfilled promises and the nation's decline under the Chavista regime. By manipulating photographs—cutting, layering, and using enamel to erase figures—Marcano captures the melancholic displacement of the migrant and former inhabitant within a contradictory urban environment.
Another proposal, though firmly rooted in architectural practice, challenges the conventional reading of architectural plans as purely technical instruments. Viviana Peña (2023) presented hand-drawn sketches of two of her architectural works: Estudio Madriguera (2021) and Casa Pajarera (2011-2015), both located in El Retiro, Antioquia. Displayed as scroll-like paper rolls and drawn in pencil, these sketches unfold asynchronously yet reveal a continuous theme in Peña's work—an exploration of how architecture acknowledges and integrates with the natural landscape.
Meanwhile, as architecture continues to be scrutinized in the 21st century for its societal impact, it becomes essential to recognize drawing not just as a technique or an artistic form of expression, but as a lingua franca—a shared language—between professionals and communities. This perspective is embodied in El Dibujadero, a project by Francisco Javier Buendía (2023), winner of the Más Cultura Local grant in 2022, awarded by Instituto Distrital de las Artes (District Institute of the Arts). El Dibujadero creates a space for creative reflection through drawing, inviting citizens to engage in collective storytelling and shape their neighborhood's identity through visual language. Open to all residents of Siete de Agosto, the initiative encouraged participants to take part in Delinear el Barrio (Tracing the Barrio), a cartographic exercise designed to explore the social fabric of their surroundings. What makes Buendía's proposal particularly compelling is its expansion of mapping beyond the neighborhood's borders, emphasizing the role of peripheral spaces in shaping and influencing the environments closest to us.
In DESERT_Z: Robotic Circumstances, professors Claudio Rossi and Daniela Atencio (2023) reimagine topographic drawing through a robotic choreography, designing a process in which a mechanical arm (ABB) sculpts twelve paraffin blocks—termed vertical witnesses by the authors—using bursts of heat. In doing so, the traditional two-dimensional representation of topography (in this case, fragments of the La Guajira desert in northern Colombia) is transformed into a dynamic, three-dimensional performance. Rather than relying on the human hand, the authors of DESERT_Z turned to its robotic counterpart to push the boundaries of transformation. With exponential strength and resilience, the robotic arm performs operations across a 360-degree range of motion. Yet, despite its precision and power, the machine retains a vulnerability that humanizes it—during one of its presentations, a power supply failure caused it to malfunction, reinforcing the idea that human intervention remains the ultimate catalyst for creative thought.
The final outcome of this robotic choreography is not just a material translation of a digital record of the landscape, mediated by algorithmic logic. The creative act is found not merely in the final carving of the paraffin, but in the metaphors embedded in its production process—reflections on the passage of time required to shape the land, the impact of climate change, and the ways of inhabiting the desert. Transformation, adaptation, and modes of existence emerge as fundamental themes, reinforcing the project's connection to landscape—one of the most recurring topics in the reflections presented at Pabellón.
In an era dominated by digital technologies, it is remarkable to see a renewed emphasis on materiality as an essential part of the design process—one that fosters physical experiences and deepens the connection to creative practice. Today, the focus in design and architecture is shifting away from static objects and toward the interactions and relationships that projects generate. This perspective aligns with Ezio Manzini, who argues that "when design moves from products to interactions, materials must also be considered as experiences" (Karana et al., 2014).
At Pabellón, participants had the opportunity to engage with projects in their real, tangible state. They could see, touch, and interact with the physical results of creative processes, while conversing with the creators—not just about how something was made, but why it was made and what comes next. In its first edition, Pabellón not only showcased a diverse range of projects reflecting the multiple dimensions of creative disciplines, but also featured in-situ materializations—projects that were tested, experienced, and validated by the creative community itself. Here, the true protagonist was the tangible product of creation, activating our senses as critical receptors of the creative act.
Thus, the art of materialization in design and architecture becomes a delicate balance between technical function and sensory experience, as Juhani Pallasmaa emphasizes:
Contemporary architecture is witnessing a growing movement against alienated visual design and purely technological approaches—toward an architecture that engages all the senses and starts from the understanding that we experience both the world and our built environments through our entire sensory system, connecting them to our complete existential image. Pallasmaa, cited in Blackwood (1999).
Material choices in design are intrinsically linked to environmental and social responsibility. Every design decision carries an environmental impact, especially when it comes to materiality. The material explorations showcased at Pabellón unfolded within a global context shaped by climate crisis, overexploitation of non-renewable resources, and globalization—pressing issues that drive designers and architects to seek alternative material solutions.
One promising avenue is the emerging field of biomaterials, which is experiencing significant growth. A prime example is CARBO, a project that utilizes algae from Latin American coastlines—whose unchecked proliferation disrupts marine ecosystems—to create bioplastics for the fashion industry. By transforming an environmental threat into a versatile and sustainable material, the project highlights the potential of alternative resource utilization. A comparable approach is seen in Proyecto Hifa: paisajes biosemióticos fungi (Hypha project: biosemiotic fungi landscapes), by Studio Hifa (2023), which explores mycelium as a primary material. Beyond introducing new materialities and processes, the project fosters new relationships with objects, illustrating advances in biodesign that merge design thinking with biology. As Danies-Turano et al. (2020) state: "Biodesign poses complex challenges that will undoubtedly evoke deep emotional responses, leading to equally profound reflections."
Another key approach to material innovation is the reengineering of existing materials to enhance efficiency and sustainability. One example is MassFabrik, by Jurado, Pinilla, and Marcano (2023), developed as part of the Emerging Materialities course at Universidad de los Andes. This project aims to reduce the environmental impact of concrete formwork, lowering material consumption while democratizing construction processes, making them more accessible and replicable. Similarly, Fluid Folly by Mattia Furler and Michiel Gieben (2023), presents an inflatable structure prototype as a sustainable architectural solution. Both projects represent early explorations into more efficient and energy-conscious construction methodologies. While a radical shift in construction processes remains a long-term challenge, these projects, showcased within an academic setting, serve as critical stepping stones toward future advancements.
From the material-centered approach of the Experimenta Bambú workshops—where participatory sensory experiences highlighted the value of bamboo—to the technification of guadua as a scalable material, explored in Pieza Punto Esfera: Tecnificación en la arquitectura de bambú (Spherical tip piece: technification in bamboo architecture) by Juan Álvarez (2023), various proposals focus on strategies for integrating alternative materials into contemporary practice. Many of these initiatives, driven by environmental concerns, aim to bridge the gap between sustainable innovation and real-world application, challenging the dominance of polluting materials. However, the issue is not merely one of material substitution, but of reframing fundamental questions that demand a paradigm shift: How can these materials be incorporated into productive and construction systems to facilitate their adoption? And how can we shift perceptions and cultural acceptance of these new solutions? One way to address this challenge is through Material-Driven Design (MDD), a methodology that positions materiality as the foundation of the design process, recognizing it as the primary driver of user experience. This approach requires a deep understanding of materials, extending beyond their technical and functional properties, as Karana et al. (2015) emphasize. Within this framework, technical exploration itself emerges as a third essential approach in the projects exhibited.
The search for new materials and processes is thus a convergence of technique, sustainability, and sensory experience, requiring their successful integration into everyday life. These projects highlight a key responsibility for designers: ensuring that alternative materials transition from experimental concepts to practical realities. By providing a platform for material-based research, Pabellón fostered a rich exchange of ideas and attracted numerous projects still in development. The event became a valuable space for dialogue and critical reflection, where peer review, exhibitions, and—most importantly—collaborative feedback played a crucial role in advancing material-driven research. Achieving a more sustainable future in architecture and product design is an ongoing challenge—one that is deeply intertwined with materiality. Understanding materials through sensory experience is key to shaping that future.
In revisiting Pabellón, we find that landscape serves as a conceptual anchor, connecting a wide range of investigations and projects. Examining Pabellón through the lens of landscape allows us to weave together questions of identity, climate change, armed conflict, memory, and the degradation of Colombian ecosystems. As a result, landscape becomes both an interpretative framework and a meeting point, crystallizing the connections between new creative formats and the environments in which they emerge, while also mapping how Pabellón reflected Colombia's geographic diversity.
At first glance, landscape seems to oscillate between two conceptual poles. On one hand, disciplines such as geography, sociology, and anthropology often define it as a set of lived experiences and everyday practices, shaped by the interplay between social structures and physical topography. In this view, topography is not merely a backdrop but a product of the bonds between people and the land they inhabit. On the other hand, landscape is deeply tied to representation, raising the question of how places are conveyed through words, sounds, or images (Dorrian & Rose, 2003). From this perspective, landscape—or landscapism—also functions as a pictorial tradition, offering a distinct way of seeing and portraying the world. As Erick Hirsch (1995) describes, there is first the landscape we observe and represent, and then the landscape that emerges through local practices, which actively shape and imbue places with meaning. Perhaps, as Liz Wells (2011) suggests, a deeper understanding of landscape and its conceptual fluidity requires us to stop thinking of it as a noun and instead embrace it as a verb—a process that transforms abstract space into meaningful place.
The graphic novel, La voz de Mamajuana—created by Juan David Cáceres, Leonardo Parra, Natalia Pardo, and Nancy Palacios (2023)—is a striking example of how adopting a landscape-based perspective compels us to question the meaning of what we see. This novel builds a narrative universe where paying close attention to our surroundings reveals the physical and symbolic layers that intertwine within the landscapes that shape us. At the heart of the story is Lucía, a student from northeastern Nariño, whose initial task—writing an essay on Volcán Doña Juana to avoid failing school—evolves into a journey of discovery. Through her research, the novel explores how geological formations are not just physical features, but integral to the identity and history of a community and its families. Here, the Andean landscape functions as both a narrative and conceptual framework, merging scientific knowledge with the lived experiences of the volcano's inhabitants. In doing so, it positions human existence within the immeasurable temporality of geological time.
The act of "shaping landscape" takes on a new dimension in DESERT_Z: Robotic Circumstances, by Daniela Atencio and Claudio Rossi. This robotic choreography, which interprets temporal and spatial processes, brings the question of landscape representation into a dynamic and performative realm. Here, heat becomes the sculpting force, allowing the robotic arm to carve material, creating a circumstantial and material behavior that situates the work within the desert of La Guajira. Through its movement, this robotic intervention constructs a shifting representation of time and space, turning South America's northernmost landscape into a performative space-time—one that gathers traces of the past to question the future conditions of a desert geography and its inhabitants. In essence, this robotic process materializes an inquiry into the potential consequences of climate change and global warming, shaping a landscape that has been historically sculpted by heat.
The representation of landscapes serves not only as a visual record but also as a critical tool for confronting the potential disappearance of strategic ecosystems. This is particularly evident in Ana González' (2023) work, Corales AG-276, where she explores the deterioration of tropical rainforests. Through textile impressions of humid forest landscapes and the act of unraveling the fabric thread by thread, González makes the fragility of nature visible, evoking the temporal shifts and continuous transformations that landscapes undergo. As she describes: "My work here is to capture landscapes, sublimate them, and intervene in them slowly, thread by thread, leaving behind the ghost of something we may never recover" (87). By its very nature, landscape embodies constant transformation, making it an ideal medium for addressing destruction and devastation that transcend a specific location.
Laboratorio de Innovación Metaspaces Medialab (2023) explores the role of landscape in documenting conflict through its project, Sentir y habitar el territorio: Sinergia entre la apropiación y la evolución (To feel and to inhabit the territory: synergy between appropriation and evolution). Located in the Guape River region, this initiative employs mapping systems to examine how armed conflict has reshaped patterns of human settlement. Here, landscape becomes a living archive, preserving the scars of violence, displacement, and survival. British landscape photographer Simon Norfolk (2023) offers a complementary perspective, questioning how landscapes preserve and reveal their histories as sites of conflict. Reflecting on his series Forensic Traces, Norfolk suggests that landscape itself holds an inherent documentary truth, one that exists beyond human narratives and shifting political discourse. Through this lens, landscape emerges as an archaeological space of inquiry, capable of offering alternative narratives about conflict and its lasting impact.
Beyond tracing the physical imprints of conflict, understanding landscape as a vessel of memory invites us to question the visible and the invisible. This concept is explored in the exhibition UMBRALEZAS: soy el primero en pisar otra vez (UMBRALEZAS: I am the first to step again) by the research group Images of the Invisible (2023), which examines vacant spaces in the municipality of Armero—a place shaped by remembrance yet largely unseen. The project shifts the gaze toward a liminal space, where the boundaries between inside and outside dissolve. By uncovering the lines and thresholds that emerge between structures and nature, it proposes a mnemonic exploration, weaving together traces of the past, presence in the now, and their convergence in the landscape. Through this lens, landscapes become witnesses to erosion and sites of memory preservation.
The projects exhibited in Pabellón illustrate how landscape functions as a powerful framework for addressing themes such as identity, climate change, ecosystem degradation, armed conflict, and memory, all while grounding them in specific places. Through a landscape-driven approach, these projects map Colombia's diverse geography—from Volcán Doña Juana in Nariño and the Pacific rainforest to Magdalena Medio, the Llanos Orientales, and the La Guajira desert. Thus, Pabellón does more than showcase landscapes—it constructs its own, forming a distinct way of "shaping landscape." In doing so, it positions itself within a network of concrete and meaningful places.
1 "Manifest". https://pabellon.uniandes.edu.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/en-manifest.pdf.