Mise-en-scène: Questioning Mastery

Architectural production of the idea/form, done primarily through the making of drawings and images, is a zealously guarded terrain, with the studio as its site. Curiously, even as the process of their generation is shrouded in mystery, it is what is understood as foundational to the identity of the architect. Indeed, what underpins a crisis wrought by the proliferation of AI-produced images is how the very notions of originality and mastery which underpin architectural identity are called into question. The purpose of this paper is twofold. For one, I trouble the question of originality through examining two contrasting methods of the pedagogy of architectural design; which I term the generative and the derivative methods. Importantly, I employ a feminist lens to argue for the latter as a potentially feminist method. In particular, I draw attention to a method of design as “mise-en-scene” developed as praxis within the Form and Structure Atelier at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, involving a 5-step process of mapping, finding & analyzing, placing, setting, and reverse engineering. A critical examination of this method brings forth a possible strategy for architectural articulation which may be simultaneously alternative, subversive, and inclusive. Further, through eschewing an orthographic gaze, it attempts to destabilize the notion of the individual (masculine) genius/master as the producer of the “original,” to position and inhabit design as a citational practice.