Platte grond, frontaanzicht, en situatie der school c. 1902

This floor plan, front view, and context of a school was rendered by Tan Tjie Lan with ink. The linework has a beautiful graphic quality. Looking at this drawing, I’m thinking about how plans of buildings are like portraits of institutions. All the shapes – rectangles, triangles, and squares – map out classrooms and corridors; all the invisible activity of the place. I imagine the architect deciding how the space would be used. It's like they're thinking "OK, here’s where the learning happens, and here’s where people walk around and meet each other. The plan is like an instruction manual for how to move through the world. When you make a drawing or painting of an architectural structure, you are bringing ideas about how the world is structured into being, and how we can relate to the spaces around us.