Architecture
VICTOR BALTARD
French architect employed
by the city of Paris, Baltard
designed the Church of
St. Augustin, which was
the first church in the capital
to be built entirely of metal
and then clad in stone.This
is a pencil drawing, with
gray and brown watercolor
wash, of the west facade
of St Augustin, made by
the architect himself.The
church is still in use today.
West Facade of the Church
of St Augustin, Paris
1871-74
VICTOR BALTARD
I
N THE CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES of architecture, film-set design, and computer game
imaging, we find the most recent steps in the evolution of graphic language. Computer
programs allow the virtual drawing of ideas. Through the animation of the screen,
architects and designers can imaginatively "climb inside" three-dimensional space and.
once there, add and subtract ideas, drawing plans around themselves within a program as
opposed to on a flat sheet of paper.
Architects have been fine-tuning their specialized branch of drawing for centuries.
Besides sketches of first thoughts and polished drawings of the finished look for clients,
they also have a diagrammatic language for communicating plans to builders. At the core
of their practice, to help them create new form, they have the Golden Section. It was the
mathematicians, philosophers, and architects of ancient Greece who first pursued the
formula for "divine proportion," reflecting the eye's love of unity in difference. This
harmony, which can be clearly seen in ancient Greek architecture, was preserved into the
Renaissance where it became a foundation stone for thinking and creativity From 15th-
century Italy, the formula for perfection spread through Europe, and in the 19th century
it was given the name the Golden Section. It was also during the Renaissance that
the architect Brunelleschi invented linear perspective, the device that has since
governed most of our picture-making (sec pp. 74-75).
Since the first flowering of Modernism in the early 20th century, architects, designers,
composers, filmmakers, fine artists, and writers have been breaking away from
traditional forms of representation to seek new expressions of shape, mass, balance,
space, time, and sound. Since Picasso and Braque's revolution of Cubism in around 1907.
European conventions of pictorial perspective have lost their monopoly on seeing. Yet the
pursuit of divine proportion and harmony remains. Perhaps in the sheer planes of some
of our greatest modern buildings it is finding its clearest expression.
Among the drawings of this chapter we look from 17th-century ecclesiastical calm. to
20th-century film fantasy; from political commentary to musical abstraction; and from
the child's view to the infinity of the vanishing point. Linear perspective is a marvelous
device, invaluable to understand and apply when you choose. It is the focus of each
practical class in this chapter, coupled with the importance of exercizing your imagination.
