Plan

Our instruments, grids and conventions might be there to help us, but they are as much client as slave. Drafting subdivides planes in an implied and compressed universe, cropped finite to keep the terror from cascading off the page and blanketing the earth. From the top we plan — ordering things that can be dropped into our dreamscapes without obscuring others. It’s not a realistic two-dimensional snapshot, but a linear cross section. We transfer these to elevations — describing structure and facade with surreally square perspective. We match up features from one view to the next, switching our minds from orthographic tops to fronts — imagining volumes where only areas exist. The trick is to constrain the variables, to balance precision with the weight of having to predict and communicate every atom. We have to keep the topologies simple enough for supercomputers. The pen divides the plane,

but only so long as we believe in it.