Drawing Architecture and the Urban

Sam Jacoby

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118879474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Diseño arquitectónico

Drawing is an important means to analyse information and develop rigorous arguments both conceptually and visually. Going beyond the how-to drawing manual, this book provides an instrumental approach to drawing, especially computer-generated drawings; it outlines how drawings should be used to convey clear and analytical information in the process of design, as well as the communication and discussion of a project. In depth examples are provided how to communicate effectively. The final section demonstrates how to transform case-studies, directly connecting an analytical approach with the design process.

1 CONVENTIONS

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Disciplines, including architecture, are defined by their conventions. A convention is formed as an agreement between people with a shared interest. Accordingly, conventions dealing with the representation of architectural or urban works derived over time from practice and agreements on usage. They are only meaningful when recognised by at least both the author and intended viewer.

The adjective ‘conventional’ today has negative connotations, as it implies an unquestioned copying of traditional solutions or styles. Yet it is impossible to advance disciplinary practices and knowledge without first knowing agreed conventions. Thus it has always been accepted that conventions are adjusted during application, requiring a continuous reassessment of their appropriateness. Conventions are not strict and final rules but general principles. The confirmation or challenge of these rules is an important part of the thinking required during design.

The principal aim of drawing conventions is to ensure the communication of a design idea and project. While early design drawings are almost unlimited in their scope and form, construction drawings are strictly coordinated and follow standards prescribing their content, scale and graphic representation. Which conventions are used depends on the intention by an author and the context in which they are presented. Meaning, a typical construction drawing follows conventions of how to describe the relations of building components, it does not, however, usually explain the sequence or method of assembly. Similarly, an urban plan might indicate building footprints but normally does not determine their specific architectural forms.

The way conventional rules are established and evolve directly reflects on changing artistic intentions and available media. Cultural exchanges and technological advances, such as the invention of the printing press, tracing paper and photography, had significant effects on how and what we draw and how we read a drawing. The axonometric projection, for example, while only developed in geometric terms in the 17th century, was used prior to this for decades in Japanese narrative depictions of dwellings and towns in their surrounding landscape. The axonometric was therefore an expression of very different understandings of reality – one to establish an empirical representation, the other to convey the thresholds and life unfolding between different environments. Although drawing conventions seem normative, they are just a form of interpretation. New technological and representational means lead to continual expansion of disciplinary knowledge, and eventually results in new conventions.

One recent technological advance in particular – the computer-generated drawing – has fundamentally changed the way we conceive and represent a design. While in the past the two-dimensional plan and its orthographic projection defined the design process, today we easily develop designs directly in three dimensions and as easily make changes to them in 3D models. In addition, computers have introduced a new realism – that of the photographic rendering. Computer-aided design (CAD) has made many old drawing skills necessary to produce a hand drawing obsolete, with drawing equipment such as T-squares, rapidographs, triangles and templates a relic of the past. Axonometric or perspectival projections are now readily available once a 3D computer model is created, thus requiring new skills, for example, that of 3D modelling. Likewise, the rendering of drawings has changed, as has lettering and hatching. Rather than having to carefully plan a drawing before its execution, CAD drawings and models are often started without a final drawing in mind. Especially the creation of different views and renderings, including the setting of materials, lights and shadows, is something that can be easily experimented with or defined according to changing parameters. But the computer has also created new challenges. The computer drawing not as an end but a means, still requires us to understand the purpose and context of a drawing; whether a drawing’s aim is to persuade or instruct. Even to know when a drawing communicates sufficiently, and is therefore deemed fit for purpose and ‘finished’, is often difficult to determine, as the computer unlike the hand drawing produces in principle not one but many versions.

While it is not the purpose of this chapter on conventions to discuss their rich cultural, philosophical and technological histories or how they have shaped the representation of architecture and graphical thinking, it is worthwhile to bear such background in mind. The intention of this chapter is a practical introduction to conventions on which the following chapters of this book build. The outlined conventions are by no means comprehensive. They merely provide a foundation and the common means of representation for the qualitative, analytical descriptions that this book develops.

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POINT, LINE, PLANE AND VOLUME

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Point, line, plane and volume are the basic geometric means to describe a two-dimensional shape or three-dimensional figure.

A point is dimensionless and indicates a location. In architectural representation this typically means an endpoint or a location along a line that serves its subdivision. Thus it is commonly the meeting or crossing point of two lines.

A line has one directional dimension and connects two points but can extend beyond them. In architectural representation, lines indicate both visible and hidden (temporary and imagined) lines and edges with a measurable length. Commonly lines are formed by two in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Acknowledgements
• TitlePage
• Copyright
• Introduction
• 1 Conventions
• 2 Architecture
• 3 The Urban
• 4 Transformation
• Drawing Acknowledgements and References
• Index
• EULA