That Guy There: The New Convention of the Populated Plan

Over-familiarity with the conventions of architectural representation in plan and perspective, paired with the advent of dimensional digital modeling software, has brought us to a new and now pervasive drawing convention: termed here as the “populated plan.” First seen as a form of cartooning in the work of OMA, and then gradually made digital under BIG, MOS, Jimenez Lai and Andrew Kovacs (to name a few), the “populated plan” is a canny, perceptual machine, not just for viewing the spaces of architecture, but also for imagining the variety of activities that inhabit these spaces. The “populated plan” is a friendly kind of device, almost childlike in its Where’s Waldo-wonderment, and filled with benign cars going to and fro, impromptu trees, lots of little people hard at work, a catalog of post-Ikea modern furnishings, and of course, plenty of mischief. “The populated plan” is a great way of enlivening an otherwise “boring” building using readily available software, and as such, it has become, very quickly, a popular choice among students of architecture, well, everywhere.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.106.27

Volume Editors
Amir Ameri & Rebecca O'Neal Dagg

ISBN
978-1-944214-15-9