The Competition for the Cover Image
At the end of the issue No. 16, the journal publishes all the proposals received for the cover image and thanks the authors who joined the ‘Evolving Drawings, Projects, and Surveys’ competition. Winning proposal: Re-ruined Rome by Marco Falsetti.
Editorial. A Necessary Adaptation
Imago Resiliens. Signs Between the Visible and the Invisible in Artificial Imagination
In the age of artificial imagination, drawing reveals itself as an organism undergoing metamorphosis. Not a singular, unique authorial gesture, but a process that creates a space of interrelation between human and machine, involving both in an evolutionary and co-evolutionary movement, from which an image emerges that always exceeds the author’s semantic intention. The project, […]
Drawing for Art Conservation: A Possible Evolution of Its Language
For several years, the field of art restoration and conservation has been engaging with new digital tools, applying them both in diagnostic contexts – for the study of materials or mechanisms of deterioration – and for measuring components and surveying artistic surfaces using scanners and digital cameras. In this context, drawing plays an analytical and […]
From Buried Time to the Resilient Image: The Neanderthal Man and the Lamalunga Cave
Within the karst depths of the Murgia plateau, the Lamalunga Cave serves as a natural sanctuary that has preserved the Altamura Man for over 150,000 years. This Homo neanderthalensis, embedded in a calcitic matrix and coated with coralloid formations, represents one of the most significant cases for paleoanthropological research worldwide. The most recent investigations (2025) mark […]
Images of the Survey: Interpreting Architecture between the Perceived and the Inaccessible
In 1988, in the opening editorial of issue 6-7 of «XY dimensioni del disegno», Roberto de Rubertis spoke of the “irreducible plurality of expressions” of surveying, which he considered in need of strategies to ensure its scientific rigour, and urged the “implementation of advanced data collection and processing procedures, with the aim of maximizing the […]
Visualising Power in Pyongyang: Political Architectures from Juche to Green
This study examines Pyongyang’s urban architecture as a strategic medium for visualising State ideology and political authority. It traces the transformation of the city’s architectural landscape from the monumental Juche architecture of the 1970s-1990s to the emergence of green architecture under Kim Jong-Un since the 2010s. During the Juche era, large-scale monuments, axial urban layouts, […]
Abstract Fragments: The Transgression of Language in the Representational Logics of Zaha Hadid
The purpose of this essay is to examine the representational processes developed by Zaha Hadid through the drawings for The Peak Leisure Club (1982-1983), a project that was never built yet is widely regarded as the primary expression of her theoretical thinking. Winner of an international competition organised by the city of Hong Kong, the project distinguished […]
Schinkel’s Lehrbuch. A Resilient ‘Form’ of Thought
“The tools for changing the world are only given together with those for understanding it” (Calvino 1972: 197). The history of travel iconography is intertwined with that of architectural representation. The corpus of drawings produced by Schinkel during his stay in Sicily offers a unique synthesis of design process and territorial representation. Departing from the antiquarian […]
From Vitruvian Firmitas to Iconic Survival: OMA’s Netherlands Dance Theater and the Afterlife of Architecture in Images
Since Vitruvius, architecture has been founded upon the principle of firmitas – the material condition of durability, stability, and permanence. In contemporary visual culture, however, shaped by dematerialization and digital circulation, architectural survival appears increasingly detached from material endurance and increasingly dependent upon the persistence of images. Drawing on the theories of Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, and […]