In-Between: Architectural Drawing and Imaginative Knowledge in Islamic and Western Traditions

This book argues that design drawings should be recognised as intermediaries, mediating between the world of ideas and the world of things, spanning the intangible and tangible. The book argues that this ’in-between’ quality to architectural drawing is essential and that it is critical to perceive drawings as subtle bodies that hold physical attributes (e.g. form, proportion, colour), highly evocative, yet with no matter. Focusing on Islamic geometric architectural drawings, both historical and contemporary, it draws on key philosophical and conceptual notions of imagination from the Islamic tradition as these relate to the creative act. It also adds to debates on philosophies of the imagination, linking both Western and Islamic traditions.