Bachelor Interior Architecture | One Sketch A Day Challenge

Analog Representation | 2nd Semester | Summer Semester 2020

With the start of lectures on March 16th 2020, students and professors alike were confronted with the extraordinary situation of reducing social contacts and public life to an absolutely necessary minimum. Under these conceivably unfavourable omens for the course "Analog Representation", which is usually spent outdoors with architectural drawing in summer, the "One Sketch A Day Challenge" began on March 23rd for the second semester of the Bachelor's programme in Interior Architecture. Paradoxically, the severe restrictions offered optimal conditions for drawing training at home.

In the course of four weeks, all 70 students and incoming students submitted a daily drawing via Moodle as a scan or photo on a given topic. The submissions were reviewed in videos on the Vimeo channel of the Department of Interior Architecture.

During the phase of the corona-induced false start and unfulfilled zest for action at the expected start of the semester, the initial reactions of the students were rather positive. As the period of isolation progressed and the effects of the current situation began to kick in - for example, by supporting family businesses or by volunteering in crisis management - the daily challenge turned into daily burden and an extension of the course seemed unreasonable. After four weeks, almost 2,000 drawings provide insights into an intensive but also stressful period of our students' lives. As a diary of daily drawing practice, they document the mutual visual contemplation of both concrete and abstract topics.

Prof. Andreas Kretzer