L: Model of a Lebbeus Woods design. R: A detailed SUPERSTRUCTURES restoration assembly drawing.

We’ve posted previously about the importance of “getting it right on paper”—working out every restoration detail in drawings before construction commences. But speculative designers like Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Archigram, and Lebbeus Woods have had the luxury of getting it wrong on paper.

Their “paper architecture” tends to skirt any responsibility to produce buildable, functional structures. But successful restoration projects must address all restoration issues systematically, on paper (or in pixels), before a contractor begins work on the building.

Lebbeus Woods asserted that “architecture is always constrained by the reality of technology.” That is, building speculative designs like his isn’t impossible; It’s a matter of whether technology can keep up with human imagination.

While new technologies are being applied rapidly to new construction, we often work on buildings that are 100 years old (or more). So, we’re constrained by the reality of technology and construction methods at the time they were built. Still, paper is a powerful tool to negotiate those historic realities.