Instruments Nine and Ten search for means of developing tacit knowledge by manipulating the essential terms of architectural drawing: projection, reception and sciagraphy. They belong to an ongoing body of research that examines indeterminate occupations in architecture beyond the reductive predictions of programme. They conclude a long period of original practice-based research on design method and representation, sustained for more than two decades.

Instruments Nine and Ten are instrumental in practical terms but they also have the appearance of didactic models. In addition, they produce drawings.

The work places the researcher in a phenomenal relationship with the issue that is being studied while they work iteratively between generation of instruments and learn from the evolution of the work. It examines didactic instruments in astronomy, natural history and natural sciences, and searches for ways to develop methods of constructing tacit knowledge to help us address uncertain circumstances in architecture (for if they were certain circumstances, we could employ explicit knowledge). Michael Polanyi discusses tacit knowledge as the fact ‘that we know more than we can tell’ (Polanyi 1966).