ARCH 10 / 01FALL 2026
Module 2- Spatial BoundariesPage

Spatial Boundaries Module Resources

Creator Thom Mayne, (Artist), American, born 1944 John Nichols, (Printer), Title Sixth Street House, project Santa Monica, California Isometrics and plan Work Type Architectural Drawings Date Drawing date: 1990 Project date: 1986-87 Material Screenprint with metal foil on paper Measurements 40 x 30" (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Description Unbuilt A revised version of the Sixth Street House was eventually built in 1997 Thom Mayne, Principal. Project team: Kim Groves, Charlie Scott, Zago, Maya Shimoguchi, Joey Shimoda, and Tim Swischuk Drawing Credit: Thom Mayne with Selwyn Ting and John Nicholas Printmakers Edition: 41/50 Excerpt from Envisioning Architecture catalogue (essay by Tina diCarlo): "Thom Mayne's drawing for the Sixth Street House invokes architectural conventions only to surpass their limitations. By collapsing plan, elevation, and detail through juxtapositions of scale, obliquity, projection, and rotation, Mayne challenges the historical view of drawing as a passive medium at the service of architecture. Mayne's design involves inserting eleven found machinery parts into a shell wrapping a preexisting bungalow (his own). Reworked into functional elements-staircase, fireplace, shower-these parts, Mayne claims, would bring invention to the site and have "the capacity to embody in built form an imagined prehistory of a place, a contemporary archaeology (past and future) and its subsequent transmission across time." This drawing, which layers a 1:24 detail and a 1:16 elevation or section over a 1:16 plan, functions similarly. The steel parts-represented by cutouts of metallic foil-appear as if unearthed, pulled out one by one, rotated, examined, and set aside, leaving behind the gray traces of their impression. Reassembled like cogs in a wheel, they become constructions of reinvented form. Mayne is a founding member of both the Santa Monica architectural firm Morphosis and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. His work recalls the machine aesthetic of the early-twentieth-century avant-garde and the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault. Originally conceived as the terminus of his investigation-that is, as architecture-Mayne's drawings mimic the parts (found objects) that he reappropriates-each of them, as Mayne says, something "simultaneously 'a part of' its context . . . while isolated, detached, disquieting, critical, and untrustful of the world 'as it exists.

Thom Mayne, Sixth Street House, project Santa Monica, California Isometrics and plan Work Type Architectural Drawings, 1990

 

“We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
but it is on the space where there is nothing
that the utility of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
but it is on the space where there is nothing
that the utility of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
and it is on these spaces where there is nothing
that the utility of the house depends.
Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is,
we should recognize the utility of what is not.”
Lao-tzu
Tao Te Ching
6th century B.C.

 

Here are the slides from the Spatial Boundaries Lecture 

Here are the slides from the Plan and Section Lecture

Maryhill Overlook Plane to Mass Analysis.pdf

Chapter 3 begins to look at the elements that start to define architectural space.  It looks carefully at the floor, wall and overhead plane and starts to associate the human condition with architectural expression.  Chapter 7 starts to look at what creates order and diversity in a composition of elements.  When reading, consider how the parts described in Form and Space can be arranged to create the Balance discussed in Principles.  

Ching, Francis DK. Architecture: Form, Space, and Order- Chapter 3-Form and Space

Ching, Francis DK. Architecture: Form, Space, and Order- Chapter 7-Principles

Architecture Form, Space, Order by Francis D. K. Ching (z-lib.org).pdf

These reading explains basic paraline drawings.  

The reading is a more thorough explanation of paraline drawings by Ching.  I suggest you skim this reading and take notes in your sketchbook by sketching out some of the concepts and diagrams you see in the pictures.   

 M2-Ching_ArchGraphics_Chapter5_ParalineDrawings.pdf 

 

Resource on Section Drawings

Section drawings are similar to plans in that they cut through the object or model.  However, these drawings are cut the opposing direction, which helps us to see the ground, sky and space created.  There are a few ways to express section drawings. 

Here is a video that explains both how to create a simple section of a simple object, and why you might need to do so.  It also explains the relationship between a "cutting plane" found on the plan to a section drawing.  It was created for industrial designers, but most of the same ideas apply.  In architecture, we typically do not use the "revolved" section drawing.  Please watch the video to see one method of drawing sections from complex 3D shapes.

The video below demonstrate how to create a section. 

 

A Note on Readings:

Technically the deadline for readings is at the end of each module when you will be completing your module quiz.  However, I strongly suggest you read a bit at a time to not get overwhelmed and to be better prepared for class time and reviews.  Since concepts will be covered toward the beginning of the module, it is best if you can complete the reading during the first week of each module.