Stung by Splendor/Bausman

Born 1958
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Performance Theater,
Los Angeles Plan, 1997
white pencil on black
Fabriona paper;
16 × 19.25 inches

(click image for larger view)

Drawing, for Karen Bausman, is a tool used to dismantle preconceptions of architectural language and to address the limits of the discipline. In her drawings, the graphic and the conceptual possibilities of the medium merge in the pursuit of original architectural expression. She does this in one of two ways: she either circumvents the conventions of architectural drawing altogether, by cutting into the paper with a blade and creating a “landscape of surface” that she can read, react to and construct (the Performance Theater drawings, 1997); or she applies those conventions so rigorously and “obsessively,” as she puts it, that they are pushed beyond the accepted notions of plan, section and elevation (The One-Way Bridge, 1996).

Bausman has been recognized with numerous national and international awards for excellence in design, including the 1994 Prix de Rome by the American Academy in Rome. While still a student at The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, she worked for a year in the office of I. M. Pei & Partners, New York. After receiving her Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1982, she formed Bausman & Gill Associates with her classmate, Leslie Gill. She is now the principal of Karen Bausman and Associates.
Bausman's work has been published and exhibited widely, including the Fellow's Exhibition (1995) at the American Academy in Rome; the Money Commission Project (1994) at Artist's Space, New York; In the Architect's Dream: Houses for the Next Millennium (1993) at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the International Architectural Exhibition (1993) at SCI-ARC, Los Angeles; Architects and Artifacts (1991) at the Society of Arts and Crafts, Pittsburgh; and Clockwork (1990) at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has taught at Yale University, Columbia University and Parsons School of Design.