Architect Drawings : A Selection of Sketches by World Famous Architects Through History

axonometric drawings. Plans were the most dominant design tool, since they proved to demonstrate
rational information. An easy way to view proportions, plans also helped to understand spatial relationships.
They indicated rooms in relationship to each other and to the whole. They allowed architects to
see the flow of space in an open plan, or to construct patterns of walls. Drawn with straight edges, plans
could be based on grids and easily measured, and were used to explore the efficiency and function of the
space. Equally rational was the axonometric drawing. Axonometrics were a mechanical version of a
three-dimensional drawing where the object was viewed from a corner, and the sides receded most
commonly at forty-five, thirty-three, or thirty-sixty degrees from a baseline. These drawings placed all
lines parallel and could be easily constructed by moving triangles along a straight-edged base. The
axonometric drawings placed the object at a distance from the viewer. Unlike a perspective construction,
where the space surrounded or passed the viewer’s peripheral vision, an axonometric drawing
took an overhead or bird’s-eye view. It did not command a one-point view location but gave each side
an equal emphasis. The observer was no longer part of the space, but viewed the object in isolation.
This distancing presented an unemotional stance, objectifying the subject rather than enticing the
viewer’s participation. Axonometric drawings can be constructed in less time (with a less complicated
process) and still provide a volumetric view. They are more rational because they do not distort proportions,
and measurements on the XYZ axis are true. Both plan and axonometric drawings can be constructed
with straight-edged instruments, leaving little imperfection or subjective qualities.
Sketches were often freehand replicas of these orthographic drawings. The modernist architects were
accustomed to drawing in plan, section, elevation, and perspective/axonometric, so they easily continued
this practice when sketching. Freehand explorations were obviously less precise and often
became combinations of several types of drawings. Architects did not need to take the time to be
entirely accurate, since the sketches functioned as a personal dialogue. The fact that sketches were
freehand did not necessary preclude them from being proportionally precise. As with descriptive
geometry, a method using dividers and proportional systems can be more precise than using measurement.
2 Modern architects had methods to find and record proportions, such as x’s to indicate the
squaring of a space, or symmetry, designating equality. A sketched plan could ignore the
thickness/poché of walls without losing its communicative abilities. Likewise, doors and windows
added into walls at a later time still indicated openings.
Although still using sketches for recording, evaluating, designing and communicating, the media
they employed reflected their architectural approach. Using various types of paper, graphite, ink, and
colored pencils, modern architects also added newly refined and precise media and instruments such
as rapidiograph pens and felt tip markers. Although used for many years, tracing paper experienced a
resurgence and was the surface of choice for design. Although less durable, it was plentiful and facilitated
the easy and exact transfer of images. This was important – part of the design could be retained
while troublesome aspects were altered. This was substantially more efficient than redrawing and also
saved common details that were reused or prefabricated. The medium also allowed minor changes to
simple, geometrically conceived designs. The fixed parallel bar of the paraline system assisted rational
architecture. Its quick manipulation of horizontals and verticals perpetuated right-angled architecture
and made sketching with tools much more attractive. Moving from inches and feet to the metric system
also replaced concentration on the human body in architecture with rational proportion, reflecting
the modernist concern with the functional over the experiential. Meters demonstrate an abstract
idea, while inches and feet encourage comparison to the human body; again, a distancing architecture.
Sketches and drawings were seen as a means to an end, rather than an embodiment of architectural
thinking or something infused with the essence of experience. Surprisingly, there was still a
remarkable amount of very expressive sketches.
The disparagement of drawing did not necessarily stop architects from sketching. The sketches by
the ‘strict modernists’ (in the functional/rational sense) such as Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, and Walter Gropius are as minimal and functional as their architecture. Later architects imbued
their architecture, and similarly their sketches, with regional and expressive elements, including Alvar
Aalto, Togo Murano, Luis Barragan, Eero Saarinen, and Louis Kahn. These architects included memory
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