Examines the social uses of architectural drawing: how it acts to direct architecture; how it helps define what is important about a design; and how it embodies claims about the architect's status and authority. Case study narratives are included with drawings from projects at all stages.

Architects Draw offers a practical and invaluable way to help students and would-be sketchers translate what they see onto the page, not as an imitation of reality, but as a comprehensive union of voids and solids, light and shadows, lines and shapes. For nearly forty years revered Cooper Union professor and artist Sue Gussow has taught aspiring architects of varying abilities how to fully observe and perceive the spaces that make up our physical environment. Gussow skillfully applies architectural language to twenty-one drawing exercises that tackle a variety of forms--from peas in a pod to monkeys, skeletons, dinosaur bones, and the art of Giacometti and Mondrian. She shows, for example, how cut fruit and paper bags reveal that the physical world is made up of planes, dimensions, and enclosed space.

An architect's defense of drawing as a way of thinking, even in an age of electronic media. Why would an architect reach for a pencil when drawing software and AutoCAD are a click away? Use a ruler when 3D-scanners and GPS devices are close at hand? In Why Architects Still Draw, Paolo Belardi offers an elegant and ardent defense of drawing by hand as a way of thinking. Belardi is no Luddite; he doesn't urge architects to give up digital devices for watercolors and a measuring tape. Rather, he makes a case for drawing as the interface between the idea and the work itself. A drawing, Belardi argues, holds within it the entire final design. It is the paradox of the acorn: a project emerges from a drawing—even from a sketch, rough and inchoate—just as an oak tree emerges from an acorn. Citing examples not just from architecture but also from literature, chemistry, music, archaeology, and art, Belardi shows how drawing is not a passive recording but a moment of invention pregnant with creative possibilities. Moving from the sketch to the survey, Belardi explores the meaning of measurement in a digital era. A survey of a site should go beyond width, height, and depth; it must include two more dimensions: history and culture. Belardi shows the sterility of techniques that value metric exactitude over cultural appropriateness, arguing for an “informed drawing” that takes into consideration more than meters or feet, stone or steel. Even in the age of electronic media, Belardi writes, drawing can maintain its role as a cornerstone of architecture.

Part of the generation of architects who were trained to draw both by hand and with digital tools, Nalina Moses recently returned to hand drawing. Finding it to be direct, pleasurable, and intuitive, she wondered whether other architects felt the same way. Single-Handedly is the result of this inquiry. An inspiring collection of 220 hand drawings by more than forty emerging architects and well-known practitioners from around the world, this book explores the reasons they draw by hand and gives testimony to the continued vitality of hand drawing in architecture. The powerful yet intimate drawings carry larger propositions about materials, space, and construction, and each one stands on its own as a work of art.

An elegant presentation of stunning and inspiring architectural drawings from antiquity to the present day Throughout history, architects have relied on drawings both to develop their ideas and communicate their vision to the world. This gorgeous collection brings together more than 250 of the finest architectural drawings of all time, revealing each architect's process and personality as never before. Creatively paired to stimulate the imagination, the illustrations span the centuries and range from sketches to renderings, simple to intricate, built projects to a utopian ideal, famous to rarely seen - a true celebration of the art of architecture. Visually paired images draw connections and contrasts between architecture from different times, styles, and places. From Michelangelo to Frank Gehry, Louise Bourgeois to Tadao Ando, B.V. Doshi to Zaha Hadid, and Grafton to Luis Barragán, the book shows the incredible variety and beauty of architectural drawings. Drawing Architecture is ideal for art and architecture lovers alike, as well as anyone interested in the intersection of creativity and history. From the publisher of Exhibit A: Exhibitions that Transformed Architecture, 1948-2000.

This book focuses on the exciting possibilities for representing the built environment with techniques ranging from pencil sketching to computers. It teaches students the following skills: how to draw using a range of media, the basic rules of making effective spatial images, and how to express ideas through appropriate media and forms of communication. Following a revised and expanded introduction, the book is divided into three sections: Media, Types and Places. Each section is illustrated with exemplary drawings and accompanying commentaries. Step-by-step sequences and practical tips will further help students to make the most of their newly acquired skills. The second edition includes more on a variety of techniques, particularly digital, and new artworks from practising architects, making it an indispensable practical and inspirational resource.

We are in the second decade of the 21st century and, as with most things, the distinction between digital and analogue has become tired and inappropriate. This is also true in the world of architectural drawing, which paradoxically is enjoying a renaissance supported by the graphic dexterity of the computer. This new fecundity has produced a contemporary glut of stunning architectural drawings and representations that could rival the most recent outpouring of architectural vision in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, there is much to learn by comparing the then and the now. The contemporary drawing is often about its ability to describe the change, fluctuations and mutability of architecture in relation to the virtual/real 21st-century continuum of architectural space. Times have changed, and the status of the architectural drawing must change with them. This reassessment is well overdue, and this edition of AD will be the catalyst for such re-examination. Features the work of: Pascal Bronner, Bryan Cantley, Peter Cook, Perry Kulper, CJ Lim, Tom Noonan, Dan Slavinsky, Neil Spiller, Peter Wilson, Nancy Wolf, Lebbeus Woods and Mas Yendo. Contributors include: Nic Clear, Mark Garcia, Simon Herron and Mark Morris.

Master the basics of architectural sketching with this proven 6-step framework: 01/Lines & 2D Objects 02/Basic Perspective Rules 03/Shadows, Textures & Materiality 04/Populating Your Sketch 05/Adding Vegetation 06/Awesome Perspective Sketch This book also includes 40+ specific tips & tricks, 15 worksheets, and countless finished sketches.

Draw In Order to See is the first book to survey the history of architectural design using the latest research in cognitive science and embodied cognition. Beginning with a primer on visual perception, cognitive science, design thinking, and modes of conception used by groups of architects in their practices, Mark Alan Hewitt surveys a 12,000-year period for specific information about the cognitive schemata used by Homo sapiens to make their buildings and habitats. The resulting history divides these modes of thinking into three large cognitive arcs: crafting, depicting, and assembling, within specific temporal frames. His analysis borrows from Merlin Donald's thesis about mimetic and symbolic cognition as critical to the emergence of the modern mind, and further employs theories of enactment and embodiment to clarify their relationship to architecture. Individual chapters treat the emergence of depiction during the Renaissance, the education of architects in the modern era, Baroque illusionism and scenography, the breakdown of artisanal literacy during the Enlightenment, and modern experiments with models, montage, and illusions of movement. The author concludes with a critique of contemporary design and education, and promotes design with embodiment as a tonic for a profession in crisis, facing the challenges of climate change, energy shortages, inequality, and housing a population of over seven billion in the coming decades. This groundbreaking and valuable study presents a clear view of current research in two related fields that have not heretofore been compared, and outlines a strategy for future research. An extensive bibliography offers readers an up-to-date reference to both the science and the architectural history behind the text.

The completely updated, illustrated bestseller on architectural graphics with over 500,000 copies sold Architectural Graphics presents a wide range of basic graphic tools and techniques designers use to communicate architectural ideas. Expanding upon the wealth of illustrations and information that have made this title a classic, this Fourth Edition provides expanded and updated coverage of drawing materials, multiview drawings, paraline drawings, and perspective drawings. Also new to this edition is the author's unique incorporation of digital technology into his successful methods. While covering essential drawing principles, this book presents: approaches to drawing section views of building interiors, methods for drawing modified perspectives, techniques for creating accurate shade and shadows, expert styles of freehand sketching and diagramming, and much more.