LAUSR

Abstract This article examines parallel projection as spatial representation and considers its role in constructing the city image. It investigates the representation of materially intangible concepts, such as infinity, impossibility and irrationality, through a close study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century screen paintings of Kyoto called Rakuchu Rakugai zu. The tools of composition used in the paintings to influence the forms of the urban imagination bring into question the current Eurocentric historiography of parallel projection in architectural drawing by Erwin Panofsky, Yves-Alain Bois, Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Massimo Scolari. The article investigates and critiques Scenes from Another Kyoto through drawing experimentation: how and what are the spaces of urban, political and imaginative tolerances of what is allowed to be represented? The drawing practice reveals, scrutinizes and inhabits aspects of Eastern< >Western authorship and authority in Rakuchu Rakugai zu and speculates on the potential and limits of drawing to influence urban imagination.