Thinking by hand: Collage as visual epistemology in the digital age

Abstract

This text examines collage as a visual epistemology capable of activating spatial forms of thought that are especially relevant in architectural education. Based on the hypothesis that collage is not only a technique of assembly but a mode of knowledge that articulates analysis, interpretation, and creation, the research shows how its practice reactivates the materiality of the graphic process in a context dominated by digital immediacy. Operations such as cutting, juxtaposing, and layering emerge as critical gestures that allow reality to be decomposed and recomposed from new perspectives.
The study is grounded in a teaching experience in which first-year architecture students reinterpret fragments from Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual through analog collages. Through this exercise, the research observes how the translation from text to image activates a narrative and speculative form of thinking that transcends mimesis. The methodology unfolds sequentially: attentive reading of the fragment, identification of atmospheres and spatial relations, material exploration through montage, and collective discussion of the results. This process reveals how collage operates as a device that generates visual hypotheses on inhabitation while making visible the pathway of thought.
From a theoretical and methodological perspective, the article situates collage in an intermediate territory between recording and invention, between memory and anticipation, aligning it with approaches that understand drawing as a research instrument. In its pedagogical dimension, the results show that collage fosters interpretive autonomy and critical thinking, consolidating itself as an experimental laboratory for rethin¬king the relationship between representation, knowledge, and creation in contemporary archi¬tectural education.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.36.2026.17