Hatchwork: An Archaeology of Generative Drawing

2026
Stuckeman School, Penn State University
In Collaboration with Andrew Kudless / Matsys

This exhibition draws from an archive of procedural drawings and architectural ideations developed by Adam Marcus and Andrew Kudless over fifteen years of experimentation with generative methods of design and graphic representation. The work is assembled as a composite field of drawings, images, diagrams, and generative media. Rather than presenting discrete objects, the exhibition operates as a single accretive surface constructed through layering, adjacency, repetition, and difference. Each drawing retains independent legibility while also functioning as a contingent fragment within the larger field.

The 1000 drawings exhibited here include computational sketches and prototypes that explore techniques for leveraging computational design tools to produce novel architectural diagrams, drawings, and modes of representation. Sixteen new drawings—eight plans by Kudless and eight sections by Marcus—adapt and repurpose algorithms, scripts, diagrammatic strategies, and formal typologies from the archive across scales and mediums. Constructed using procedural workflows entirely in two dimensions, these drawings resist the model-driven paradigm that dictates much of contemporary architectural production, insisting instead on the primacy and relevance of drawing as a generative instrument rather than a mere deliverable.

This work demonstrates the value of computational tools not just for producing complex geometries or optimizing performance metrics, but also for generating conditions of possibility for architecture. Rather than leveraging these tools to produce an ideal form or building, the intent is more archaeological: to mine the generative archive through an iterative process of reuse, translation, transformation, and discovery. Archaeology here is not a search for origins, but a non-linear practice of excavation—where ideas are recovered, recombined, and reactivated rather than finalized. Procedural openness, incompleteness, and indeterminacy are treated not as deficiencies, but as productive qualities. Drawing thus reemerges as a critical medium in its own right—one that can produce new spatial and conceptual insights deeply relevant to the making of architecture.

Project Credits:
Exhibition Content: Adam Marcus / Variable Projects and Andrew Kudless / Matsys
Exhibition Design: Adam Marcus / Variable Projects and Andrew Kudless / Matsys
Gallery Team: Benay Gursoy, Orsolya Gaspar, Yasaman Ghaffarian, Setareh Farashzadeh
Photography: Adam Marcus, Brian Reed