Chapter 1
The benefits of drawing
The act of drawing is an important starting point for the
intellectual process we call ‘design’. To be able to draw
a chair or a building is a prerequisite for anyone wishing
to design such things. Drawing has two functions for
the designer – it allows him or her to record and to
analyse existing examples, and the sketch provides the
medium with which to test the appearance of some
imagined object.
Before the advent of photography most architects
kept a sketchbook in which they recorded the details of
buildings, which they could refer to when designing. The
fruits of the Grand Tour or more local wanderings
consisted of drawn material supported, perhaps, by
written information or surveyed dimensions.
The sketchbook provided a form of research and a
library of plans and details to crib at a later stage. Because
the architect is not necessarily aiming only at
documentary representation, the sketches were often
searching and analytical. Many of the drawings prepared
found their way into later designs. The English architect
C.R. Cockerell used pocket-sized sketchbooks and filled
them with drawings not only of sites in Italy and Greece,
but also of cities in Britain. His sketchbooks, which
survive at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA),
show that a direct link existed between Cockerell’s field
studies and his commissions as an architect. Later
architects such as Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier and Louis
Kahn employed the sketchbook in a similar fashion,
though to different ends. Lord Foster (opposite) continues
with this tradition.
Drawings have been used by architects in many
different ways. Ranging between the opposite poles of
the freehand drawing as a record and as a design tool
exist many different applications for the designer. Some
architects use the sketch as the main means of
communicating a design idea to clients. Such sketches
relay the thinking behind a proposal as well as suggesting
a tangible form. Other architects use the sketch to
analyse townscape and to indicate how their design will
fit into the street. Others use the sketch as a method of
studying building typology, using the analysis as a way of
placing their design into known precedents. However the
sketch is employed, the main point is to use the freehand
drawing as a design tool, as a method of giving form and
expression to one’s thoughts. One may finish the design
process with a formal perspective, but that end product
should not be where sketching begins. Design analysis
through the freehand drawing should be at the start of the
creative process, not at the end, and preferably before the
design commission arrives in the first place. TheThe benefits of drawing 1