Abstract
This paper presents introductory drawing and design works that seek to expand students’ understanding and conceptualization of space. Within the context of first year undergraduate design and drawing coursework, a series of phenomenologically driven assignments disrupts and enriches the traditional, and arguably necessary, curriculum of orthogonal and orthographic conceptions and projections of space. The paper argues that while the abstraction of ‘rational,’ Cartesian spatial language, thoroughly embedded in the theories and practices of art and architecture, is a necessary and productive convention; it is nonetheless imperative that the beginning student also discover space as a profoundly subjective construct, continuously emergent and contingent, able to advance one’s understanding, agency, and engagement with the larger, intersubjective world.