Architectural Drawings: An Inquiry II

In conjunction to my previous post on Architectural Drawing, I wanted to bring to forth some examples for the elaboration of ideas expressed earlier. These voyeuristic pictures are taken in an examination hall - during a History exam, where students were expected to explain several structures by sketching them out. Most of these sketches are appalling, with little sense of scale, proportion or any architectural value. If I may say, these are more like diagrams which 5-8 year old children would make as their first impression of a building. The do not even have the sensuality of medieval artistic drawings.

This is not to say that such students can not become architects. But what is happening to the emphasis of the course on drawing? Computer softwares have definitely challenged the traditional ways of hand drawing, but which architecture college in India is that software savvy? We do not even have sufficient infrastructure to deal with such softwares in institutions. Therefore, it may not be wrong to assume the strong dependence of our curriculum on hand-drawing. Having said that, at the third year level, do we expect basic buildings to be drawn like above? Three years in the course, are we obliged to tolerate such frivolous attitude in the canonical understanding of built forms (scale, proportion, etc.) from students?

Does architectural education need to depart from drawing as an essential skill to be able to understand built environments? What possible re configurations in the physical environment can we imagine if
a. we have drawings like the above?
b. if drawings are not a part of architectural education?
c. if drawing as a medium is replaced by some other medium / tool?

etc.

It's time to seriously think what pedagogical turn we need to take, given the huge amount of intake in architecture courses, where we attract a thick bunch of students who do not necessarily have any aptitude for this field. We are just entertaining them on the money they have paid! Again, I might sound cynical. But the point is that if we need to maintain the wide spectrum of the course so as to allow all such kinds of people (interested and non interested), we need to harness any kind of potential they may have in pursuits of architecture.

(I am sure I am terribly unclear in the above paragraph - but the non-clarity is intentional, since i may end up becoming too narrow minded and biased in my opinion)

I think as basic exercises, following is what could be done in history classes:

1. Draw a square using scale
2. Draw a square without using scale
3. Draw a rectangle 
4. Make an octagon using a square
5. try drawing a circle without a compass
6. Draw a circle inscribed in a square
7. Draw 4 equal squares to make a single larger square
8. Draw two rectangles that make one square
9. Draw two squares which are 8 squares away from each other
10. Find the centre of a square

And the list continues. These are basic geometric principles we studied in our schools and most students seem to have forgotten it. Since this is school knowledge, one can not even debate about the entry of all kinds of fields (science, arts, commerce) into architecture. All above questions are directly manifestations of buildings. These are the ways in which our ancestors too must have devised systems to make their spaces. But anyway, one can go on. I am just trying to find out ways in which we tackle the current crisis...We are in an age of extreme ignorance.