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

The Chinese and Japanese built sophisticated architecture that depended upon strict rules
pertaining to tradition and religious practices. This tight control of architectural expression
limited the need for drawings and particularly sketches, although the arts of drawing and
painting were tremendously refined. A descendant of vernacular type, the tearoom was
developed as a style in Japan during the Tensho era, 1573–1592 AD. Much of the tearoom
design has been attributed to the tea master Sen no Rikyu, celebrating a sense of space in
Japanese architecture (Stewart, 1987). Drawings from Asia show representation of architecture
that may be primarily pictorial. Sketches as conceptually exploring architectural intention
are less common.
As a result of travel during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, imperialism
affected the styles of architecture around the world. Originating primarily from Europe, the
influence of the baroque and neoclassical styles appeared throughout the world. Without a
developed architectural identity, the newly formed United States looked to Europe for models.
The profession of architecture in the United States was not organized until the late
1800s. Builders and laymen copied buildings, prior to this time, from pattern books; therefore,
sketches were not needed.
Many forces united to create an attitude toward sketching that suggested the individuality
of the architect and the ability to provoke imagination as a creative endeavor. While
most pre-Renaissance buildings contained some level of visual communication as part of the
design process, little of this evidence remains. This fact may question whether the sketches
were used to envision the project in its entirety before construction as may be expected of
the profession. In cases where sketches convey less tangible information than solely recording
or communicating, they inherently act as remnants of design process.
Drawings, although they are part of the construction process, do not always reveal the
imaginative inspiration. Again, Wolfgang Meisenheimer expresses the emotion and allusions
involved when a sketch tries to speak in terms of the undefinable. He writes about poetic
drawings that embody the ‘traces of the memory and the dreams of the drawer, outbreaks of
temperament and wit, provocations of the observer, riddles, vague evocations or gestures of
philosophical thesis ...The transferals and interpretations which result from them move on
all possible levels’ (1987, p. 111). Thus the sketch, as a thinking instrument, carries the individual
dialogue requiring the associative reflections that encourage interpretation and
manipulation. The initiation and implementation of sketches into design process required an
altered philosophical attitude making the Cinquecento a Renaissance for sketches as well as
cultural thought.
POST-RENAISSANCE
This book begins with Renaissance sketches as a philosophical point of departure. Once
identified as a means to visualize concepts, the use of sketches never waned. Although their
uses developed at different times and in various forms around the world, they were used less
or not at all in the construction of vernacular architecture. The story of the sketch extends
from the perspective of Western Europe where their use was more prominent in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries with baroque, French classicism, rococo and eighteenth
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