Between 1950 and 1980 a vibrant print culture emerged from the engagement of architects with graphic media to produce drawings with an eye on distributing their visions globally. These more heroic forms of authored documents coexist with lesser venerated reproductive practices that were grounded in the bureaucratic organization of practice and administration. This exhibition selects a series of print-ready drawings from this period, from mechanical documents, to xeroxed pages, to one off watercolors that emulate the effects of photography. Each exhibited drawing is a contact zone between material supply companies, duplicative services, technical workers, and the world of architecture. Printing in its technological variation bridged the introduction of the computer and underpinned the persistence of paper despite promises of the paperless. Out of these duplicative processes came endless copies, composited and layered formats that complicated architectural definitions of medium and authorship that were being constructed in the same period.

Sarah Hearne is an architectural historian, educator, and curator. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where she oversees the exhibition spaces in the school of architecture. She holds a doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles with a dissertation titled: “Other Things Visible on Paper: Architectural Writing and Imaging Craftsmanship 1960–1987.” She has worked on several exhibitions including most recently as an associate curator on Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths at the Canadian Centre of Architecture and the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.