Drawing in the University Today: A Tool to Think in Engineering

This text outlines some considerations on the use of drawing and its diverse capabilities as a tool for thinking, in the context of a university education. We present a case study from the University of Porto, focusing particularly on the study of engineering and its direct involvement with drawing issues. We discuss the concept of drawing and the respective mechanisms of divergence and convergence that are enmeshed in the methodologies used in projectual processes and in which drawing is an instrument of conception and mediation, a tool, and a means of graphic communication. We analyse the importance of the use of digital technologies in the processes of construction/representation of drawing images, assess their impact on teaching methods, and insist on the teaching of drawing as formative discipline. We outline the development of drawing from an artistic activity to a synthetic knowledge organizing tool that brought us to the functional separation between artistic and technical drawing, to understand its capabilities as a teaching tool in the classroom both as a creative and as a synthetic instrument.