The Draw­ing as a Bound­ary Object

By reflect­ing on a spe­cif­ic research case, this arti­cle aims to explore the hand draw­ing as a bound­ary object for inter­act­ing with vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties through intro­spec­tion and to facil­i­tate ini­ti­at­ing ver­bal­iza­tion with the self and oth­ers. Observ­ing the emer­gence, effect and after-effect of solid­i­fy­ing the self in a hand draw­ing uncov­ers the bind­ing prop­er­ty of the bound­ary object between dif­fer­ent ben­e­fi­cia­ries, poten­tial vic­tims and enablers in the con­text of the griev­ing process.

The con­cept of the bound­ary object has a wide range of poten­tial appli­ca­tions, it is used as a facil­i­ta­tor between dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers,[1] [2] as it rep­re­sents a com­mon con­struct and has a dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ty for each ben­e­fi­cia­ry. The com­mon bound­aries of each are brought togeth­er in this object; it is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the over­lap­ping indi­vid­ual inter­ests of each ben­e­fi­cia­ry and brings a coheren­cy to the sur­face.[3] Bound­ary objects are of a het­ero­ge­neous nature: with­out a fixed form and thus open to the inter­pre­ta­tion of dif­fer­ent ben­e­fi­cia­ries but still have an inter­sub­jec­tive lev­el that ensures their struc­ture is pre­served.[4] Car­la Cipol­la, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the research about design for soci­etal inno­va­tion, and Thomas Binder, an author regard­ing design research, have pre­vi­ous­ly linked the design­er to the bound­ary object.[5] [6]

Accord­ing to Brené Brown, intro­spec­tion inher­ent­ly pre­cedes prac­tic­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.[7] On the oth­er hand, lit­er­a­ture states that com­mu­ni­ca­tion between mourn­ers about their loss enhances the mourn­ing process. A con­nec­tion with mem­o­ries, estab­lished through con­ver­sa­tion, can place the griev­ing process in per­spec­tive.[8] The fol­low­ing reflec­tions are con­duct­ed from an auto-ethno­graph­i­cal research case, where a bound­ary object was devel­oped unin­ten­tion­al­ly, lead­ing to a series of insights.[9] By reflect­ing on this case, one first encoun­ters the for­mu­la­tion of a series of key char­ac­ter­is­tics: qual­i­ties and ini­tial pre­con­di­tions of the bound­ary object. This case was cho­sen because of the con­flu­ence of two lev­els of vulnerability: 

1. A per­son­al lev­el: the research is con­duct­ed by the first author, who deals with the griev­ing process of her father's death and the dif­fi­cul­ty with­in her fam­i­ly to talk about what hap­pened. The bound­ary object became the main tool in the design research. 
2. An inter­na­tion­al lev­el: giv­en the com­bi­na­tion of a high num­ber of bereaved peo­ple who go through the griev­ing process[10] and the indi­ca­tion that death is a taboo sub­ject in the West­ern world. [11] [12] [13]

Hence the draw­ing trans­formed into a bound­ary object, gen­er­at­ing con­nec­tions between dif­fer­ent actors through open­ness and ver­bal­iza­tion.[14] The inter­ac­tion between ver­bal­iza­tion and the draw­ing was a tool to exam­ine the inter­pre­ta­tion of per­son­al expe­ri­ence on three con­sec­u­tive lev­els: inter­nal ver­bal­iza­tion, for ver­i­fy­ing whether the inter­pre­ta­tion of inter­nal thoughts is accu­rate, exter­nal ver­bal­iza­tion, for pre­sent­ing these thoughts to friends and fam­i­ly in order to con­firm them or not, and sub­se­quent mutu­al ver­bal­iza­tion, for mak­ing them debat­able and thus more pre­cise. Map­ping the draw­ing process leads to pin­point­ing the four cru­cial steps where the bound­ary object is devel­oped, acti­vat­ed and exposed, by con­serv­ing, rad­i­cal­ly recon­struct­ing and pos­si­bly over­com­ing per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. Reflect­ing on the draw­ing process leads to uncov­er­ing a series of oper­a­tional prop­er­ties for the bound­ary object. These state­ments are con­firmed in the fol­low­ing research case, sug­gest­ing the explo­ration of bound­ary objects are impor­tant for pre­serv­ing coheren­cy between dif­fer­ent ben­e­fi­cia­ries in a griev­ing process and beyond. These insights and reflec­tions have the poten­tial to ulti­mate­ly lead to soci­etal benefits. 

The Research Case

A bound­ary object was devel­oped through design dri­ven research in the con­text of the research group The Draw­ing and The Space.[15] It did not lead to mak­ing phys­i­cal space, but to cre­at­ing drawn and men­tal space. The fol­low­ing text is a first-hand reflec­tion on the poten­tial of the archi­tec­tur­al draw­ing. It ref­er­ences mul­ti­ple actors who will be cat­e­go­rized for reflec­tion as expert, enabler, poten­tial vic­tim and ben­e­fi­cia­ry. The first author is iden­ti­fied as the expert in draw­ing space (by being an archi­tect) and the enabler of the draw­ing process (by ini­ti­at­ing the process). The author and her imme­di­ate fam­i­ly are both poten­tial vic­tims and ben­e­fi­cia­ries, since they have all lost a close rel­a­tive and in dif­fer­ing ways ben­e­fit­ed from the ver­bal­iza­tion of the griev­ing process. 

Drawing Stadia

The sub­ject of this research emerged as a draw­ing of an imag­i­nary mnemon­ic house that remained unfin­ished as a pre­con­di­tion for its exis­tence and was based on spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries dur­ing the last weeks of the first author’s father’s life.[16] This draw­ing is pre­ced­ed by indis­pens­able proces­su­al draw­ings that move through a num­ber of cycli­cal stadia:

First, mem­o­ries that took place in the child­hood home were writ­ten down and ana­lyzed. This led to a chrono­log­i­cal sequence of rooms that had no resem­blance to the family’s phys­i­cal home. Dur­ing the design process the rooms were giv­en names, mem­o­ries and trans­formed into new forms by ref­er­enc­ing a spe­cif­ic mem­o­ry that took place in a room. This process embod­ied a con­scious remem­brance of spaces where the first author grew up by a cycli­cal switch­ing between writ­ten mem­o­ries and reflect­ing and read­ing in order to gain aware­ness about her uncon­scious thoughts and to redis­cov­er a dis­tanced men­tal space. This process of active remem­ber­ing was accel­er­at­ed by cul­ti­vat­ing inspi­ra­tion and aspi­ra­tion at dif­fer­ent steps of the design process from sec­ondary activ­i­ties e.g., lis­ten­ing to music, pod­casts or lec­tures about loss and death while draw­ing and look­ing for vocab­u­lary when read­ing to order thoughts. A note­book was rou­tine­ly at hand while read­ing, the amount of time spent alter­nat­ing between read­ing, lis­ten­ing, writ­ing, and draw­ing with­out pause was direct­ly pro­por­tion­al to an aware­ness of the sub­con­scious. When a break occurred in this process—due to the phys­i­cal need for sleep or food—access to this men­tal space was reestab­lished all over again. 

The process of memo writ­ing feeds the draw­ing process and vice ver­sa. These memories were trans­lat­ed into anno­tat­ed plans and sec­tions that facil­i­tat­ed the gen­er­a­tion and order­ing of thoughts while serv­ing as a con­stant overview result­ing in a sequence of spaces—materialized mem­o­ries. The afore­men­tioned are con­sid­ered ​‘tools’ defin­ing a first draw­ing with­out think­ing about mate­ri­als and details meant to be part of the final design. The draw­ing process con­tains a sys­tem­at­ic switch­ing between floor plan and cross-sec­tion, which is not exact­ly the sec­tion of the first plan. A ver­ti­cal cross-sec­tion forces the draw­er to design the spa­tial dimen­sion, while the insights gained by draw­ing the sec­tion lead to a new plan and so on. This makes draw­ing an essen­tial part of the research process. The last step, drawn at a scale of 1 to 10 (2700 x 2200 mm), tends more towards a draft. It is a struc­tural­ly fea­si­ble design and there­fore trans­forms into an inter­sub­jec­tive­ly relat­able inte­ri­or of leave-tak­ing by guid­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers or oth­er peo­ple griev­ing through the embod­i­ment of mem­o­ries of the last weeks of the first author’s father’s life. This process simul­ta­ne­ous­ly trig­gers a kind of Janu­sian reflec­tion and, while ​‘walk­ing’ through the spaces in the draw­ing, a men­tal­ly lit­er­al look­ing back­ward and for­ward through the drawn build­ing: Why did he remain silent? Why did they remain silent? Should they have known? What sig­nals did they miss?

The main con­struct of the draw­ing process pre­ced­ing the final draw­ing was to process and coun­ter­act the avoid­ance of mem­o­ries in order to con­tribute to the indi­vid­ual mourn­ing process. In ret­ro­spect, it turned out that a reflec­tion about the agency of archi­tec­ture and draw­ing in the griev­ing process, and its ther­a­peu­tic capac­i­ty, was imposed. The design dri­ven research in this case study gen­er­at­ed a num­ber of per­son­al insights, show­ing how loss not only leads to sor­row, but also to insights and new trans­fer­able knowl­edge through draw­ing. One of the key ele­ments in this research tra­jec­to­ry was deal­ing with vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty on mul­ti­ple lev­els (see ​‘2. The Act of Draw­ing’ below) dur­ing the hand draw­ing process, in the hand draw­ing and in the space acti­vat­ed by the drawing. 

When ana­lyz­ing and reliv­ing the draw­ing process through observ­ing the emer­gence, effect and after-effect of the draw­ing as a bound­ary object, hence­forth referred to as ​“bound­ary draw­ing”, a num­ber of turn­ing points become clear. The draw­ing is clas­si­fied as a bound­ary draw­ing since it is used as a facil­i­ta­tor of ver­bal­iza­tion between par­tic­i­pants by rep­re­sent­ing a com­mon inter­est, facil­i­tat­ing three lev­els of ver­bal­iza­tion: inter­nal ver­bal­iza­tion (with the self), exter­nal ver­bal­iza­tion (to oth­ers) and mutu­al ver­bal­iza­tion (with an audi­ence). In this research case four cru­cial chrono­log­i­cal steps—that in ret­ro­spect fuelled the research process—can be dis­cerned by reflect­ing on how the bound­ary draw­ing is devel­oped, (re)activated and even­tu­al­ly exposed. These steps are derived from the research case and thus not described here as a truth, but as an ini­tial basis for fur­ther research:

1. The Agency of Memories and Thoughts

The research began by writ­ing, with as much detail as pos­si­ble, spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries and thoughts of her father in her child­hood home that were in turn arranged by the domes­tic space they took place in. Sub­se­quent­ly, these mem­o­ries were chrono­log­i­cal­ly sequenced and trans­lat­ed into a series of drawn spaces that could be ordered, thus mak­ing it pos­si­ble to cre­ate asso­ci­a­tions, observe rela­tions between spaces and project upon them the syn­thet­ic com­bi­na­tion of writ­ten and drawn space that pro­vides access to men­tal space. When mem­o­ries are not­ed (memo-writ­ing) [17] and trans­lat­ed (draw­ing) into spaces they become explic­it, hence they can no longer be avoid­ed thoughts become sort­ed and allow for direct con­fronta­tions and ver­bal­iza­tions with the self which inevitably leads to introspection.

2. The Act of Drawing

The mem­o­ry of the weeks pri­or to and the moment of death itself re-emerged by engag­ing with the draw­ing process as a form of re-enact­ment. The act of draw­ing solid­i­fied mem­o­ries and thoughts by trans­lat­ing them from emo­tion to mat­ter. These tan­gi­ble media were cru­cial to low­er the bar for ini­ti­at­ing ver­bal­iza­tion about the invis­i­ble, intan­gi­ble self. The drawn and writ­ten space allowed access to the men­tal space again and again dri­ven by synes­thet­ic per­cep­tions. After apply­ing a slow draw­ing method, a large draw­ing became an inter­me­di­ary to ver­bal­ize per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties with the self and more­over facil­i­tat­ed con­nec­tion with oth­ers through open­ness and verbalization.

In order to trans­late mem­o­ry spe­cif­ic details and the inher­ent sub­jec­tive nature of a mem­o­ry, a slow draw­ing method was required to con­scious­ly observe and cap­ture the embod­ied knowl­edge, hence the project was delib­er­ate­ly hand drawn at an enlarged scale. This large size acti­vat­ed both self-reflec­tion and a more pre­cise ver­bal­iza­tion of mem­o­ries and thoughts emerg­ing from the draw­ing while insti­gat­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of oth­er ben­e­fi­cia­ries, as the size allowed for sit­ting around and talk­ing about the draw­ing with sev­er­al actors through the—act of—drawing [ 6 ].

Both draw­ing and writ­ing spaces are indis­pens­able instru­ments that allow one to access, read, under­stand and mate­ri­al­ize men­tal space while the acti­va­tion of men­tal space pre­cedes the cre­ation of drawn space. Draw­ing and writ­ing pro­vide access to men­tal space through ver­bal­iza­tion, even­tu­al­ly the drawn and writ­ten space become a first mate­ri­al­iza­tion of men­tal space. Dur­ing the mate­ri­al­iza­tion of men­tal space—through the drawn space—new men­tal space emerges, as drawn space grants access to men­tal space again and again. The draw­ing process in this case requires sev­er­al months. When time unavoid­ably inter­rupts dif­fer­ent draw­ing ses­sions, re-enter­ing this men­tal space feels more dif­fi­cult and becomes repeat­ed­ly acces­si­ble after each inter­rup­tion by con­tin­u­ing the draw­ing process, cre­at­ing and acti­vat­ing men­tal and drawn space. This men­tal space allows for active think­ing and reflect­ing on mem­o­ries only acces­si­ble to the self —thus defin­ing an inher­ent­ly safe space.[19] Lat­er in the arti­cle the men­tal space involved in the draw­ing process is referred to as a ​‘safe space of the first order’, a pre­con­di­tion for the exis­tence of both men­tal and drawn spaces in the process of devel­op­ing a bound­ary drawing. 

Both men­tal and drawn space share over­lap­ping prop­er­ties that elic­it synes­thet­ic per­cep­tions (smell, feel­ing, atmos­phere) which keeps the draw­ing process oper­at­ing. Upon reflec­tion on the mem­o­ries that are sub­ject to the draw­ing process in this case, they often reveal them­selves as a com­pos­ite of sen­so­ry per­cep­tions, evoked by oth­er sen­so­ry per­cep­tions. Dur­ing the process of mate­ri­al­iz­ing a mem­o­ry in the draw­ing new mem­o­ries emerge. A par­tic­u­lar com­po­si­tion of lines dur­ing the draw­ing process may link spe­cif­ic loca­tions with­in men­tal space.

Both spaces facil­i­tate the trans­la­tion of mem­o­ry-spe­cif­ic details, from men­tal space to drawn space and vice ver­sa, as well as the read­ing of both spaces. Only the self can read men­tal space, while both the self and the vis­i­tor can read drawn space. The drawn space is offered as a trans­fer­or of ideas to oth­ers because of its space-spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics. The imme­di­ate expe­ri­enc­ing of space by a human being leads to emo­tion­al stim­uli and has an impact on one’s con­scious­ness. Men­tal space will lat­er be crossed by oth­er poten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries in the drawn space through ver­bal­iza­tion, gen­er­at­ing over­lap­ping sen­so­ry prop­er­ties that con­tribute to the drawn space as bound­ary draw­ing.[20]

These con­se­quen­tial modes of draw­ing serve to cre­ate spaces imbued with the poten­tial to trans­mute vulnerabilities—too sen­si­tive to address men­tal­ly pri­or to this draw­ing process—into new per­son­al under­stand­ings. Dur­ing the pub­lic peer review the first author shares per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties through the draw­ing, this intro­duces per­son­al insights that estab­lish­es a new type of space – ​‘a brave space’ [21] The designed space nev­er projects the verisimil­i­tude of a mem­o­ry, it does not have the same poten­tial clar­i­ty as cer­tain draw­ings. Yet the space, like the mem­o­ry, can be expe­ri­enced. Any hand drawn rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a space is inter­pret­ed dif­fer­ent­ly by each observ­er. With­in the (inter)subjective con­cep­tion of space, dri­ven by a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty through trans­lat­ing mem­o­ries, lies the pow­er of an acti­vat­ed men­tal and drawn space. Cre­at­ing space is a tool to solid­i­fy mem­o­ries. Drawn archi­tec­ture becomes space from the moment you can walk through it men­tal­ly, thus the (non-)existence of this space in the draw­ing is sub­jec­tive. The draw­ing can only become a space through men­tal space.

Most archi­tects use draw­ing as a tool lead­ing to the con­struc­tion of a build­ing (exe­cu­tion draw­ings). This arti­cle does not focus on this kind of draw­ing, rather, it focus­es on the ​‘work­ing’ draw­ing as an ongo­ing process, which is the cen­tral research tool of the archi­tect and there­fore no less impor­tant than the built space.[22] The work­ing draw­ing brings the par­tic­i­pants, the draw­ing and its cre­ator togeth­er in a net­work (see ​‘3. Par­tic­i­pa­tive Draw­ing’ below) in which vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty can emerge: vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties are under­stood here­with as poten­tial strengths, devel­oped through deal­ing with del­i­cate sub­jects. Fol­low­ing ways to han­dle vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties are inher­ent to the work­ing draw­ing in this case:

1. Belief in the draw­ing as a space to be vis­it­ed, which is typ­i­cal­ly not evi­dent in sci­ence-ori­ent­ed milieus, where a sep­a­ra­tion between phys­i­cal and men­tal health is assumed.
2. The open mind of the author/drawer and by exten­sion of the mul­ti­ple drawers/participants in this process, which implies, fuelled by the draw­ing process, remov­ing shield­ed per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in the con­text of the safe space of the first order. An open mind also allows for mem­o­ries to wan­der, to be shared and activated.
3. Trans­lat­ing emo­tion into mat­ter so that a part of the self can solid­i­fy the draw­ing. The mate­ri­al­i­ty of the draw­ing itself helps the draw­ing to evolve. 
4. Look­ing for ways to grasp and solid­i­fy sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and make them more trans­fer­able between stake­hold­ers on an inter­sub­jec­tive lev­el of under­stand­ing, i.e. the author’s remem­brances of things com­ing from an aware­ness of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the self through ver­bal­iza­tion with the self. This case demon­strates how draw­ing archi­tec­ture has a bar low­er­ing ther­a­peu­tic poten­tial as com­pared with a con­ven­tion­al ver­bal­iza­tion through words.
5. This way of draw­ing acti­vates space that also has the capac­i­ty to con­vert vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties into new under­stand­ings through reflect­ing on what is (not) drawn.

3. Participative Drawing

As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, in order to cap­ture spe­cif­ic details through the inher­ent­ly sub­jec­tive nature of mem­o­ry, the project was delib­er­ate­ly hand-drawn at a large scale (1:10). The result­ing draw­ing was 2700mm x 2200mm; this scale per­mit­ted the active par­tic­i­pa­tion of oth­ers who were also cop­ing with loss, hence it helped to estab­lish the bound­ary draw­ing and acti­vat­ed ver­bal­iza­tions of the draw­ing process by explain­ing the mean­ing of what was—or was not—being drawn, includ­ing the motives beyond the drawing. 

1. As the dead­line for the pub­lic peer review approached, it became clear that fin­ish­ing the draw­ing alone with­in the giv­en time frame was not pos­si­ble. The first author request­ed draw­ing assis­tance first from friends and lat­er fam­i­ly to com­plete the draw­ing. At first it was eas­i­er to talk about the draw­ing with friends than with fam­i­ly mem­bers, because of their direct involve­ment in her father's death. Ask­ing for help in gen­er­al was not nat­ur­al, but trans­fer­ring the sub­ject from the self to the drawing—solidified memories—made this sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er. Ini­tial­ly help was request­ed to com­plete the draw­ing on time for the pub­lic peer review. Dur­ing this stage it occurred that the crit­i­cal con­struct was ver­bal­iza­tion through devel­op­ing and acti­vat­ing the bound­ary drawing.
2. As par­tic­i­pants joined the draw­ing process, ver­bal­iza­tion about the self through explain­ing the inten­tion of the draw­ing by address­ing solid­i­fied mem­o­ries emerged. Under­stand­ing the sub­ject of the draw­ing was cru­cial for friends and fam­i­ly who helped draw­ing to be more moti­vat­ed to spend hours work­ing, due to the feel­ing that they could final­ly help with some­thing con­crete in the griev­ing process of the first author. Dur­ing these hours of repet­i­tive hatch­ing, diverse con­ver­sa­tions took place about the draw­ing and its gen­e­sis, trans­form­ing the draw­ing into a bound­ary drawing.

Estab­lish­ing a safe space is a cru­cial step in the draw­ing process before being able to allow involv­ing oth­ers in draw­ing, this is where the bound­ary draw­ing is acti­vat­ed for the sec­ond time (after acti­vat­ing the bound­ary draw­ing for the first time by ver­bal­iz­ing with the self).[23] This part of the process can be dis­sect­ed into the fol­low­ing two pre­con­di­tions for the bound­ary draw­ing to emerge:

An Open-Ended Starting Point:

The bound­ary draw­ing was large, and as such com­plet­ing it for the pub­lic peer review was too much work for one per­son. Its size emerged from the open-end­ed nature of the case. The draw­ing was large enough to sit­u­ate mem­o­ry-spe­cif­ic details into the total­i­ty of both mem­o­ries and the draw­ing, and to invite addi­tion­al par­tic­i­pants around the draw­ing table. Con­se­quent­ly, there was also a need for mod­u­lat­ing the archi­tec­tur­al total­i­ty into frag­ments to sep­a­rate mem­o­ry-spe­cif­ic details [ 10 ] from the rest of the draw­ing in order to study them bet­ter and make the sub­ject of ver­bal­iza­tion eas­i­ly acces­si­ble for discussion.

Intersecting Identities:

The moti­va­tion of the first author, friends and fam­i­ly for work­ing togeth­er towards the bound­ary draw­ing indi­cat­ed a num­ber of over­lap­ping inter­ests. The first author was the griev­er, as well as one of the enablers and the ben­e­fi­cia­ry. She start­ed this research to por­tray her mem­o­ries that pre­ced­ed this ​‘sud­den’ death on a pub­lic peer review in order to con­tribute to her griev­ing process. The par­tic­i­pants in the research group The Draw­ing and the Space became enablers by pro­vid­ing a precondition—the safe space—[24] for the result. The friends (ben­e­fi­cia­ries) helped the first author in order to help in the griev­ing process before, but did not know how. The imme­di­ate fam­i­ly mem­bers (poten­tial vic­tims and ben­e­fi­cia­ries) help draw­ing in order to under­stand the process that pre­ced­ed this ​‘sud­den’ death and make it nego­tiable, but do not know how. The draw­ing was a tan­gi­ble work tool to facil­i­tate and share the griev­ing process. Over­lap­ping inter­ests of poten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries, vic­tims and enablers insti­gat­ed the cre­ation of the bound­ary draw­ing. By trans­form­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties into a phys­i­cal draw­ing, insight into loss was devel­oped, com­ing togeth­er around this draw­ing can be com­pared to rit­u­al acts famil­iar to everyone. 

4. The Public Peer Review

In ret­ro­spect, cre­at­ing a time-frame for the pre­sen­ta­tion and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the case at the end of the process for an inter­na­tion­al pan­el of aca­d­e­mics and peer review­ers in the con­text of a pub­lic exhi­bi­tion had sev­er­al advan­tages: While devel­op­ing the bound­ary draw­ing the dead­line for the pub­lic peer review was an incen­tive to ask for help with cre­at­ing the bound­ary draw­ing, lead­ing to new ben­e­fi­cia­ries. Addi­tion­al­ly, dur­ing the final pub­lic peer review new insights emerged. Dur­ing a process of ver­bal­iza­tion, it became clear that not only the direct fam­i­ly mem­bers had dif­fi­cul­ties ver­bal­iz­ing what hap­pened, but also the first author her­self. Besides these first insights it became evi­dent that, by show­ing the drawn space to oth­ers, more ben­e­fi­cia­ries arose through expe­ri­enc­ing the draw­ing.[25] Oth­er ben­e­fi­cia­ries rec­og­nized them­selves in this space, reflect­ing a blur­ring of the bar­ri­er between the read­er and the draw­ing. As Buber has stat­ed: “(the artist) … for in expos­ing him­self he can expose all men to them­selves, by show­ing them sub­jec­tiv­i­ty in all its pro­fun­di­ty.”[26] This case demon­strat­ed how gen­er­at­ing a bound­ary draw­ing led to a turn­ing point in the griev­ing process.

Reflection on the Research Project

Defining the Boundary Drawing

In the first two steps, the bound­ary draw­ing was devel­oped and acti­vat­ed for the first time through intro­spec­tion and inter­nal ver­bal­iza­tion, with the self. Dur­ing the third step the bound­ary draw­ing was re-acti­vat­ed, this time through exter­nal ver­bal­iza­tion by draw­ing togeth­er. In the fourth step it was exposed and acti­vat­ed for the third time dur­ing the pub­lic peer review in the set­ting of an exhi­bi­tion, through mutu­al ver­bal­iza­tion with the audi­ence. In order to come to define the bound­ary draw­ing, the fol­low­ing bound­ary objects are iden­ti­fied as:

1. The dead­line of the pub­lic peer review (acti­vat­ing the incen­tive to ask for help and think about what had hap­pened, the bound­ary draw­ing starts to develop)
2. The draw­ing (this is the work­place, the active part, where one ver­bal­izes thoughts to the self through draw­ing, the foun­da­tion for the bound­ary draw­ing is developed)
3. The pub­lic peer review (reflec­tion: when one ver­bal­izes thoughts to an audi­ence one also finds insights, the bound­ary draw­ing is exposed)

The bound­ary draw­ing does not express a truth, it is mere­ly a tool for achiev­ing a greater goal.[30] After reflect­ing on this spe­cif­ic case, we come to the for­mu­la­tion of a series of qual­i­ties and ini­tial pre­con­di­tions for the bound­ary draw­ing to oper­ate, suc­ces­sive­ly explained in the fol­low­ing paragraphs.

Only one draw­ing cycle (cov­er­ing the four steps above) was com­plet­ed when the stop­ping rule came into effect. This rule was indi­cat­ed by the moment sat­u­ra­tion occurred after step 4, i.e. when no sub­stan­tial new infor­ma­tion sur­faced through this first draw­ing-con­ver­sa­tion cycle. How­ev­er, a next cycle could be ini­ti­at­ed at any time, hence start­ing cycles of ​‘Crit­i­cal Sequen­tial Draw­ing’[31] in cycli­cal iter­a­tions, poten­tial­ly allow­ing the ver­bal­iza­tion of the first cycle to impact the next draw­ing cycle.

Qualities

The bound­ary object gen­er­ates a unique com­bi­na­tion of qual­i­ties. A reflec­tion by the first author on the case above reveals the poten­tial inter­sec­tions between vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and archi­tec­ture. Draw­ing ini­ti­ates ver­bal­iza­tion with the self and oth­ers through con­serv­ing, rad­i­cal­ly recon­struct­ing and pos­si­bly destroy­ing per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties by devel­op­ing, reac­ti­vat­ing and expos­ing the bound­ary draw­ing. This case shows how inter­act­ing with per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties through draw­ing space can be healing.

Draw­ing can solid­i­fy the intan­gi­ble self, insti­gate look­ing for ways to grasp and solid­i­fy sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and make them more trans­fer­able between beneficiaries/stakeholders on an inter­sub­jec­tive lev­el of under­stand­ing, i.e. the ben­e­fi­cia­ries’ remem­brances of things com­ing from the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the self. In turn, what is not drawn may be reveal­ing to the self and oth­ers. With­out ver­bal­iza­tion the con­cep­tion of space is dif­fer­ent for each ben­e­fi­cia­ry. When the ratio­nale of the draw­ing, dri­ven by vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties through trans­lat­ing mem­o­ries is explained to the par­tic­i­pants of the draw­ing process, their con­cep­tion of the draw­ing changes. Ratio­nal­iza­tion through ver­bal­iza­tion is less open to inter­pre­ta­tion than the read­ing of the draw­ing. The com­bi­na­tion of the draw­ing and its ver­bal­iza­tion prompts the vis­i­tor into a sit­u­a­tion, ini­ti­at­ed through the bound­ary draw­ing, where see­ing becomes rather ​'vis­cer­al'.[32] [33] In this case the abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize one­self in a draw­ing is embed­ded in the inter­pre­ta­tive dif­fer­ence between the draw­ing and the ver­bal­ized draw­ing. Elkins wrote about this con­cept:​“Read­ers make sense of drawn bod­ies in terms of their own body’s sense of itself.” [34]

The draw­ing process ben­e­fits from the ver­bal­iza­tion of the mem­o­ries writ­ten down before, which results in solid­i­fy­ing the self in a draw­ing. It is more obvi­ous to talk about a tan­gi­ble draw­ing than about the intan­gi­ble self. The drawn and men­tal space both con­vey a safe space of the first order, induc­ing ver­bal­iza­tion with the self. This space evolves into a safe space of the sec­ond order, induc­ing ver­bal­iza­tion with famil­iar ben­e­fi­cia­ries. These spaces evolve into a brave space, induc­ing ver­bal­iza­tion with unfa­mil­iar ben­e­fi­cia­ries. In this case these three lev­els of ver­bal­iza­tion can only be attained through the process of devel­op­ing a bound­ary draw­ing, tem­porar­i­ly acti­vat­ed, yet gen­er­at­ing last­ing con­se­quences, and there­fore of a per­ma­nent char­ac­ter. Even though these first extract­ed qual­i­ties need fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion to be con­firmed, this case indi­cates the capac­i­ty of the bound­ary draw­ing to con­tribute to a per­son­al and a soci­etal well-being.

Initial Preconditions

The enabler was unaware of her inter­sect­ing iden­ti­ties and there­fore insti­gat­ed the process of devel­op­ing a bound­ary draw­ing (enabler/beneficiary/potential victim/…). The start­ing point was a safe space with­in the self and in the exter­nal cir­cum­stances. Dur­ing this process the safe space trans­formed into a brave space from the moment the bound­ary draw­ing was acti­vat­ed, this was only pos­si­ble with inter­sub­jec­tive sup­port. Final­ly, both draw­ing exper­tise to devel­op the bound­ary draw­ing and an open end­ed case to acti­vate the bound­ary draw­ing were part of the list of pre­con­di­tions for the draw­ing to emerge as a bound­ary object. 

Intersecting Identities

Feel­ing the need to explore cer­tain mem­o­ries was a trig­ger for ini­ti­at­ing the process of devel­op­ing a bound­ary draw­ing. The beneficiary/victim embod­ied inter­sect­ing inter­ests by being both the poten­tial vic­tim and the beneficiary.

The sub­jec­tive iden­ti­ties of dif­fer­ent actors shift­ed dur­ing the process of devel­op­ing and expos­ing a bound­ary draw­ing through per­son­al insights. The ini­tial enabler was only able to trans­form into a ben­e­fi­cia­ry because of the draw­ing process, dur­ing these first steps. Dur­ing the pub­lic peer review it became clear to her that she was the poten­tial vic­tim all along. This real­iza­tion would not have occurred with­out the acti­va­tion of the bound­ary draw­ing. Because of the poten­tial of gen­er­at­ing mutu­al agen­cies with respect to the bound­ary draw­ing, the lat­ter played a cru­cial role in achiev­ing these insights.

Safe Space

A safe space was chrono­log­i­cal­ly estab­lished on three lev­els:[35] (1) in the self, (the first order safe space) (2) in the exter­nal cir­cum­stances (the sec­ond order safe space), and (3) cre­at­ed by the self (the third order safe-space).

1. The first order was reflect­ed in step 1. Not­ing mem­o­ries and trans­lat­ing them into drawn space was a first step in the process of mate­ri­al­iz­ing mem­o­ries. In order to tran­scribe these mem­o­ries, the first author intu­itive­ly required the feel­ing of resid­ing in a place where her mem­o­ries would not be judged. This safe space of the first order was reflect­ed in step 1. It was nec­es­sary so dis­placed mem­o­ries could not be avoid­ed but were active­ly evoked, ensur­ing (a) the aware­ness that no one would be able to read these notes with­out per­mis­sion, and (b) the aware­ness that no one could exact­ly deduct her spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries from her draw­ing with­out explanation.
2. The sec­ond order was reflect­ed in steps 2 to 3 and embed­ded in exter­nal cir­cum­stances cre­at­ed by the high-trust con­text of the research group The Draw­ing and The Space.[36] The par­tic­i­pants in this research group did not judge, respect­ed the time need­ed for the first author to open up and did not put pres­sure on what was or was not explained dur­ing the draw­ing process. This sec­ond order was a pre­con­di­tion for involv­ing oth­er par­tic­i­pants in the draw­ing process. First the research group, lat­er the friends of the first author and even­tu­al­ly the fam­i­ly of the first author became the par­tic­i­pants in this safe space.
3. The third order was reflect­ed in step 4 and was embed­ded in the abil­i­ty to cre­ate an exter­nal safe space, first for one­self, lat­er find­ing it in exter­nal cir­cum­stances and even­tu­al­ly cre­at­ing the cir­cum­stances that made it pos­si­ble to trans­form the safe space into a brave space (see def­i­n­i­tion below).

Drawing Expertise

Draw­ing exper­tise is one of the most impor­tant tools of the archi­tect and has been essen­tial in this case for trans­lat­ing mem­o­ries. After the first stage of the research, an anno­tat­ed plan and sec­tion were drawn direct­ly from mem­o­ry to main­tain a con­stant overview of the mul­ti­tude of mem­o­ries dur­ing the draw­ing process. The draw­ing process con­sist­ed of ​‘Crit­i­cal Sequen­tial Draw­ing’ (CSD), [37] [38] a con­stant alter­na­tion between draw­ing a plan and a sec­tion, both stem­ming from the pre­vi­ous one and lead­ing to new insights. CSD will be addressed cycli­cal­ly in the fol­low­ing research steps. While draw­ing a ver­ti­cal or hor­i­zon­tal sec­tion, a solid­i­fi­ca­tion of the mem­o­ry pre­sent­ed itself. This ren­dered the draw­ing exper­tise of the architect/enabler, owned by the first author (enabler/victim/beneficiary), a quin­tes­sen­tial ele­ment for the bound­ary draw­ing to emerge. With­out being able to cre­ate drawn space through men­tal space in the draw­ing, and thus trans­lat­ing mem­o­ries, the con­sec­u­tive Steps 3: ​‘Par­tic­i­pa­tive Draw­ing’ and 4: ​‘The Pub­lic Peer Review’ would not have occurred. The project emerged from ​‘the expe­ri­ence’, a series of mem­o­ries and thoughts and was expli­cat­ed in a series of fragments/details linked togeth­er, in which the tech­ni­cal com­po­nent of mak­ing archi­tec­ture was present. Both the archi­tec­tur­al draw­ing and the sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence of the drawn space were con­sti­tu­tive for this case.

Open-Ended Case

The absence of a clear end goal at the begin­ning of the research was a pre­con­di­tion for the unin­ten­tion­al devel­op­ment of a bound­ary draw­ing, it was a tool to achieve an end goal, not an end goal in of itself. The pub­lic peer review was an incen­tive to ask for help. By going through the whole process—from the prepa­ra­tion over the work­ing ses­sions with the bound­ary draw­ing to the pub­lic peer review in the set­ting of and exhibition—the actu­al ben­e­fi­cia­ries, vic­tims, enablers and even bound­ary objects became clear. The draw­ing (after­wards referred to as the bound­ary draw­ing) served a very dif­fer­ent pur­pose at the start of the process than in the end. The open-end­ed nature led to a series of new insights, includ­ing the indi­ca­tion that after going through the first cycle, new cycles can be start­ed based on this first cycle (see ​‘Reflec­tion’ above). This pre­con­di­tion was a trig­ger for fur­ther research. 

In this case the draw­ing was large enough for accom­mo­dat­ing mem­o­ry spe­cif­ic details with­in a sequence of mem­o­ries, and for invit­ing more ben­e­fi­cia­ries around the draw­ing table.

Brave-Space

In order to cre­ate a bound­ary draw­ing with impact beyond famil­iar ben­e­fi­cia­ries, a safe space evolved into a brave space,[39] in which one can speak freely with­out being afraid of being judged for vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and main­ly receive sup­port. In this case the safe space was pro­vid­ed by the con­text of the research group The Draw­ing and The Space and by men­tal space con­struct­ed while draw­ing. From the moment more unknown ben­e­fi­cia­ries start­ed to enter the bound­ary draw­ing, the safe space trans­formed into a brave space through the ver­bal­iza­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. Once the brave space was reached it became eas­i­er to re-enter the safe space of the first order to start anoth­er draw­ing and ver­bal­iza­tion cycle. In this brave space dia­logue was fos­tered and dif­fer­ences between stake­hold­ers were acknowl­edged in order to gen­er­ate new under­stand­ings. Cre­at­ing a safe space for the self and then, lat­er, through exter­nal cir­cum­stance, trans­form­ing the safe space into a brave space made it pos­si­ble to explain the draw­ing to peers and lay peo­ple dur­ing the pub­lic review. By han­dling vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in the safe space, resilience was devel­oped on an indi­vid­ual lev­el, and lat­er in the brave space on an inter­sub­jec­tive lev­el. This pro­vid­ed a hope­ful indi­ca­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty to deploy indi­vid­ual vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties on a soci­etal lev­el through ver­bal­iza­tion and drawing.

Conclusion

The draw­ing as a bound­ary object can play a cru­cial role in achiev­ing ver­bal­iza­tion in order to han­dle per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. In order to under­stand its oper­a­tional modes and pos­si­bly deploy it on a soci­etal lev­el, the pur­pose of this arti­cle is to seek an ini­tial def­i­n­i­tion of the bound­ary draw­ing by observ­ing the emer­gence, effect and after-effect through a first case study. This def­i­n­i­tion pro­vides a basis that requires fur­ther research in order to observe how and to what extent these indi­ca­tions are con­firmed or crit­i­cal­ly ques­tioned. [40]

In this case the bound­ary draw­ing is acti­vat­ed through con­serv­ing, rad­i­cal­ly recon­struct­ing and pos­si­bly destroy­ing per­son­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties on three chrono­log­i­cal lev­els of ver­bal­iza­tion about the intan­gi­ble self: ver­bal­iza­tion with the self, ver­bal­iza­tion with oth­ers and, even­tu­al­ly, ver­bal­iza­tion with the unfa­mil­iar. These lev­els are facil­i­tat­ed by the devel­op­ment of the bound­ary draw­ing, which in turn is acti­vat­ed by the retrieval of the safe and lat­er the brave space. The draw­ing awak­ens inter­sub­jec­tiv­i­ties through vis­cer­al see­ing that gen­er­ate unam­bigu­ous and pre­cise ver­bal­iza­tion through pro­vid­ing access to indi­vid­ual and lat­er shared inter­sub­jec­tive men­tal space, which is the cen­tral mech­a­nism behind the bound­ary draw­ing. A recog­ni­tion in per­son­al mem­o­ries, estab­lished through ver­bal­iza­tion, insti­gat­ed through draw­ing, pro­vides notions and enhances the griev­ing process.[41] This case demon­strates how gen­er­at­ing an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal bound­ary draw­ing leads to major insights. This spa­tial sim­u­la­tion of mem­o­ries that are dif­fi­cult to ver­bal­ize, fed by respec­tive­ly the safe space and the brave space, turns intan­gi­ble phe­nom­e­na into tan­gi­ble and vis­i­ble ones. Archi­tec­ture presents itself as an agent that has the capac­i­ty to bring peo­ple togeth­er and gen­er­ate sup­port.[42] The process of devel­op­ing the first author’s research case rais­es the aware­ness of the capac­i­ty of archi­tec­ture and archi­tec­tur­al draw­ing to con­tribute to a per­son­al and a soci­etal well-being in process­es of loss and mourning.