Drawing
The Old Days
About 14,000 years ago, an unidentified hominid scratched an image onto the wall of a Spanish cave.[1] As far as we know, it was the world’s very first architectural illustration. The “drawing” appears to show a collection of huts. We don’t know if it represented the artist’s own village (as a topographical drawing), if the huts were yet to be built (a rendering), or if it was purely a figment of the artist’s imagination (a fantasy drawing). Such distinctions in architectural imagery were unknown to Stone Age artists. Architecture itself didn’t arrive for another 5,000 years.
“I created this map of Toronto using a combination of traditional pen & ink for drafting and digital tools for references (Google maps and the Toronto 3D Open Data). I wanted to create artwork using some of the digital tools that planners and architects use on a daily basis.
“Also the act of drawing each building by hand, in axonometric view, helped me to have a deeper understanding of even the smallest details. For me, the movement and even the imperfections that are captured by hand drawing are what make it so great.
The entire piece is just under 10 feet in length and 3 feet wide.”
– Kathleen Fu
A hundred and forty centuries after this first drawing, architectural technology has changed a lot, and so has the technology of depicting architecture, and yet, against all odds, the use of old-school hand tools persists – now pencils, pens and brushes rather than sharp stones – despite the overpowering seductiveness of digital imagery. Some would say that architectural hand drawing has had its day. What’s the point of clinging to some paleolithic invention in the digital age? Why can’t we just let it go?
As architects, this question should interest us because it affects the work we do. In the architectural press, there has been a lot of back-and-forth lately about the value of hand-drawn versus digital imagery, including the opinion that hand drawing has little value, or no value at all. The fact that this discussion has been raging for more than 30 years, and continues unabated, offers some evidence that hand drawing still has a place in the architectural profession.
The debate began in earnest around the time that digital modelling, drafting and rendering became viable – and not just novel – as architectural design and presentation tools.
Computerization has, of course, made a major change in the way we work today. […] It is mindboggling to imagine the architect’s office at the end of our next 100 years! One can regret the passing of the fine pencil work and artistry of the old-time draughtsman but the speed and precision of CADD is here to stay.
– Toronto architect Dan T. Dunlop Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 2, July 1989
The days of drawings are over. Design is all digital now. It gives you so much more freedom.
– Los Angeles architect Thom Mayne, quoted by Aaron Betsky in “Machine Dreams,” in Architecture, June 1997
Architects need to have feeling too and not suppress the emotional in favour of the rational. Since computers are only rational, they can only ever provide half of a solution.
– Toronto architect Eberhard Zeidler, Perspectives, Fall 1999
What Now?
“This work shows a panoramic view from the Large Amphitheater in the Zaryadye Park in Moscow. Point of view is essential in this work as it represents harmony between modern and historic architecture.”
– Tonya Popovitch
Two of my favourite online sources, commonedge.org and archdaily.com, have been hosting lively conversations on the topic of contemporary architectural hand drawing, and the recently published Single-Handedly[2] (see below) offers some thoughtful insights into the subject, accompanied by many impressive examples. There are also some thriving architectural hand drawing competitions. ArchigraphicArts[3], hosted by Archplatforma.ru and the Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing (Berlin), is now in its sixth year. The AIA Dallas KRob[4] competition is in its 44th year as adjudicator and caretaker of the architectural hand drawing tradition.
Much of the current discussion of hand drawing assumes that the art form is on its last legs. A common wistful sentiment is: Why doesn’t anybody draw anymore? It’s (mostly) older architects who despair that younger practitioners are neglecting a valuable tradition in favour of something newer, shinier and, yes, much more powerful. Doesn’t that always happen? I had started to wonder whether this discussion was at all productive, since it seemed to be preaching to – and read by – the converted.
So I was pleasantly surprised when, a few months ago, an international illustration competition for architectural students received almost as many hand-done entries as digital ones, and they covered the spectrum from design sketches to topographical studies.
The competition, the 2019 American Society of Architectural Illustrators (ASAI)[5] Student Competition, was held in April of this year, the Professional Competition (now 34 years old) having been held in March. This competition, Architecture in Perspective (AIP), is unique in that it juries digital and hand-done drawings side-by-side, relying on artistic merit, regardless of technique, to separate the great drawings from the merely good ones. In recent years, digital drawings have represented a significant majority of submissions. But, this year, hand drawings staged a comeback.
Not only does this bode well for the future of traditional hand drawing, it also shows that you don’t have to be an architectural dinosaur to appreciate the value of hand drawing. As Martin C. Pedersen confirms in “Drawing Should Still Matter to Architects and Designers,”[6] “The truth is, younger architects and designers continue to draw,” although, he adds, “What I don’t think post-computer designers do, […] is draw continually through the process.”
But the future of hand drawing is not necessarily assured, either. In his Commonedge essay, “The Pleasures and Futility of Teaching Drawing to Architecture Students,”[7] Graham McKay laments that “I spend as much time advocating for [hand drawing’s] usefulness as I do teaching it.” He goes on to say, “The strong point of drawing is that it can’t make design ideas look any better than they are. By the same token, this is probably why it’s falling out of favor with architects and students alike.”[8]
I think McKay’s verdict may be premature. Thanks to educators like him, rumours of the death of hand drawing are greatly exaggerated. Just as important, the discussion continues.
Single-Handedly: Contemporary Architects Draw by Hand.
Nalina Moses, ED. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2019
The discussion of architectural hand drawing rests on two questions. First: Is hand drawing still a useful design tool, in this age of digital modelling? Second: Are hand drawings still viable presentation and communication vehicles, compared with computer renderings? The answer to both questions is: it depends – on the idea, the illustrator, the audience and the intent. Single-Handedly presents a compendium of contemporary architectural images drawn, as the title suggests, by hand. The book focuses on the usefulness of hand drawings in expressing and developing architectural ideas, with some attention given to how those ideas might be communicated to a viewer. It largely avoids the question of presentation drawing, i.e., drawings intended to persuade, but it does present a strong case for the sheer delight of hand drawing.
In the book’s introduction, Nalina Moses writes, “A hand drawing often also possesses an alluring unfinished quality, as if it’s still right now being completed, and remains open to possibility.” (p. 12). A convincing example of this can be seen in the marker drawings of Lars Steffensen (p. 122). Using drama, spontaneity, texture and dynamic composition, Steffensen’s drawings present an exceptional advertisement for the ability of hand sketching to generate excitement in an architectural or urban proposal.
“Inspired by the images of the city, I was fascinated by the idea of creating a timeless, harmonious interior, with the illusion of human presence. There is a storyline and a dialogue with the viewer, which for me is very valuable. I like the idea of using theatricality in the visual arts.”
– Nataliya Eliseeva
In his Foreword, architect Tom Kundig refers to hand drawing as “the imperfect but poetic process of attempting to make a connection between an external reality and our internal impulses.” This is an apt description of many design and exploratory drawings, which tend to convey meaning only to their creator and other architects. When such drawings are exhibited to a wider public, they appear exuberant, but often baffling. So it’s a pleasure to encounter the work of Denis Andernach (p. 90), whose elegant pen draftsmanship creates beautifully balanced two-dimensional compositions that contrast buildings with their landscape. The work of Joyce Rosner (p. 154) makes use of contrast and controlled graded colour to create 3D compositions on a 2D plane.
It’s often useful to categorize drawings in order to draw attention to their strengths. Moses creates several loose categories for the images in her book. But good 2D drawings, like objects in the 3D world, often belong to many categories. The work of Alexander Krylov (p. 218) is lyrical, descriptive, narrative and, by chanelling Archigram drawings of the 1960s, generates a mood of lighthearted nostalgia.
The drawings of Natliya Eliseeva (p. 144) deserve special mention because they demonstrate the many possibilities of effective architectural imagery. They combine topographical drawing with fantasy to create a strong sense of narrative. The narrative is enhanced by the inclusion of human activity – not, as in many images, stylish figures milling about – in the form of personal objects, compositionally placed within the space. As Moses writes in her brief description,
The furniture and personal possessions within these rooms, rendered with great care, make the case for an architecture that is intimate and that can be known only from the inside.
This statement makes two important points about these illustrations, and about superior architectural illustration in general. First, there is evidence of human occupation and activities that relate uniquely to the space, inviting a number of possible narratives. Second, architecture is as much about creating space, as form – with space being possibly more important to the experience of architecture, but harder to depict.
We can only speculate about what the Stone Age Iberian was thinking when he etched his drawings onto that cave wall. But hand drawing, as we know it today, can be so much more expressive of human thought than almost any other form of art, once we establish what thoughts we wish to express, why we want to express them, and to whom.
“My rendering process is done entirely by hand without any digital aid or input. But for many years now, I’ve been in this personal struggle as I receive a client’s digital massing model to overlay and add building detail and entourage. It is one of the early steps necessary to create the final drawing and it helps speed up the process by quickly providing an approved and accurate base view.
“But I miss the perspective set-up that I used to do by hand that would literally give shape to the view that I was envisioning. It allowed me to experience that tactile, hands-on image making that is the true reward for the effort spent. I was able to craft each line, each piece placed just so, as I watched the drawing slowly reveal itself on the blank sheet of vellum taped to my drawing board.
“That process of layering the trace by hand, changing here, refining there, seeing the view come alive, the touch of the pencil on the paper (crisp and ruled where necessary, soft and loose as the entourage is staged in) provided a very gratifying balance between artistic problem solving and the underlying precision and process of mechanical drawing. The pencil transfer then refined the block-out, and the application of color was (and still is) the cherry on top!”
- Al Forster
Drawings and Notes
Tom Schaller
“I am proud of what I accomplished. And in helping to keep alive the art of hand-done media in a technologically driven industry, I am especially proud.”
– Thomas W. Schaller. Thomas W. Schaller Architect of Light: Watercolor Paintings by a Master. Blue Ash, Ohio: North Light Books, 2018, 13-14
“Architecture has always been a passion. But I learned early on that the ideas and stories it had to tell in two-dimensional form were where my heart really lived.” – Thomas W. Schaller, Architect of Light, 13
Sergei Tchoban
Hand drawing represents a long tradition. Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of Russian illustrators, of which Nataliya Eliseeva and the following three illustrators provide good examples.
“This drawing is a variant for the idea-competition entry House of Hieronymus Bosch. Later it was used for the poster of the opera by Menotti Telefon and Medium in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, where I designed the stage (scenography). In general this drawing is important for me to think about architectural forms and the context of contemporary architecture in a historical town.”
– Sergei Tchoban
Serge Tchoban is an architect with offices in Berlin and Moscow. He is the founder of the Tchoban Foundation, which operates the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin. Many of his drawings express personal ideas about architecture. He has exhibited frequently in AIP competitions and is ASAI’s president-elect for 2020.
Eugene Zhilinsky
“It seems that North America cultivates more single-skill specialists, unlike the Russian multitasking nature. I was surprised to discover that a vast amount of architects here can’t draw. “I think that for architecture and the world it is important to be able express one’s design concept not just verbally with plenty of design sample cut-outs but also literally and visually by creating clear drawings full of atmosphere and light. We were more oriented toward this visual ability during our professional studies [in St. Petersburg, Russia], not as business-oriented as Toronto students, for instance. The rest is just endless practice. My involvement in urban sketching works the same as constant sport training does for Olympians.”
– Eugene Zhilinsky
Artur Skizhali-Veys
“This work has no specific client or site. it is an architectural fantasy from a series of drawings “Images of the cities of the future.” “The “architectural jungle” futuristic city permeates an extensive network of hanging high-rise streets that lead to a Grand “Techno-cocoon,” which has been conceived as an intellectual (smart) building of a new generation, equipped with a single cybernetic centre that controls the entire life of the metropolis. Inside the building you can change to any type of transport, including flying cars; air parking is at the top.
“I have used the technique of old masters, “by hand,” but with completely new futuristic ideas to create a rich image of a high-density multi-level volumetric urban space of the future.”
– Artur Skizhali-Veys
Justin Ng
My sketchbooks are part of an on-going project in which I record my travels. At a time when screens are becoming the interface for much of life’s events, being on-location exposes me to the nuances of light, sound and smell, qualities of architecture that cannot be experienced digitally. In the process of recreating on paper what lies before my eyes, I become intimately acquainted with my subject, forcing me to observe, rather than gaze. Unlike orthographic drawings that focus on objective reality, sketching en plein air embraces the human perspective along with emotions and empathy, enabling the exploration of the spatial and visual richness of cities, which I believe to be a step towards the re-humanization of our cities.
The scale of the Piazza del Campo is striking. My drawing was an attempt to capture how the city hall relates to the piazza and the smaller streets around it.
Dennis Allain
Although I started my career with natural drawing methods, I have, over the past two decades, almost exclusively used digital art media. These have helped me capture an artistic expression that seems to suit my creative intentions.
Traditionally artists start with very rough sketches to begin forming their idea. For me the process typically begins in a 3D environment. Often, a photo or image reference from the internet sparks my imagination.
The hand drawings of Lebbeus Woods reveal small textures and construction lines that become part of his architectonic fabric. Digital painting tools can mimic these subtleties but it is the artist who chooses whether or not to notice them.
In hand drawing, there is no algorithm to determine what goes where. Every line or brushstroke is the artist’s signature, placed there, either carefully or haphazardly. For this reason, each drawing has the potential to reveal the artist’s personality, taste, predilections and strengths.
Some computer illustrators are able to imbue their digital work with a hand-done quality, in essence, capturing the advantages of both worlds.
Before becoming a digital illustrator, Dennis Allain was a successful renderer in colored pencil, marker, watercolour and air brush. Now he works with digital models which he draws, paints and scribbles over in order to achieve the remarkably emotive and tactile images that he is renowned for.
Sketching remains a mandatory component of the design and artistic process. Modern technology has provided us with pressure sensitive tablets, where the motion of the hand and its contact with the line can help capture the spark of creation. It also aids the artist in breaking through the rigid design barriers that can often occur when dealing with the absolute nature of a digital interface.
Digital tools are a product of today. They help harness a limitless world of possibilities, but they do not have control over the artist’s result. The artist has the final say.
Art is not taught; it is practiced.
– Dennis Allain, AIA
NOTES
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/prehistoric-rock-carvings- were-humanitys-first-ever-architectural-plans-a6759361.html
Nalina Moses, ed. Single-Handedly: Contemporary Architects Draw by Hand. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2019
ArchigraphicArts
KRob
asai.org
https://commonedge.org/drawing-should-still-matter-to-architectsand- designers/
https://commonedge.org/the-pleasures-and-futility-of-teaching-drawingto- architecture-students/
It may offer some comfort to know that the discussion is not limited to architectural students. A research paper “Drawing-to-Learn: A Framework for Using Drawings to Promote Model-Based Reasoning in Biology,” discusses the growing interest in hand drawing as a means of teaching future biologists. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4353088/