Understanding Architecture Through Drawing

Graphics frequently play an important role within the
functional landscape. The numbering of railway wagons
and the alphabetic coding of buildings adds a further
component to the air of rationalism. The graphic style is
necessarily practical – a form of squared-off lettering
tends to be used, often in conjunction with exaggerated
scale. The scene (and hence the analytical sketch) can
take on the qualities of a Russian Constructivist painting
as a result of the almost abstract superimposition of
graphics, structures and architecture.
As the lettering does not normally have to appeal to
city sensibilities, it is often crudely painted or at least has
a visually carefree style typical of industrial landscapes. In
modern factory areas, the graphics are often part of
corporate identity (as with British Steel) and have a
corresponding lifelessness, but in older industrial areas
the style of lettering can be rather idiosyncratic and hence
more rewarding for the artist.
The sketches that result from a close scrutiny of
industrial areas can have artistic value, as well as helping
to teach us lessons about design. If buildings are
designed purely out of practical consideration, with no
special regard for appearance, then the resulting
structures have a form quite different from buildings
designed on aesthetic grounds. Only the ‘high tech’
modernists such as Lord Rogers and Lord Foster produce
contemporary architecture that has qualities which derive
from the spirit of our industrial tradition. These architects
place the building services on the outside and leave
cranes on the roof to suggest a flexible and utilitarian
approach to design. Their use of sheet metal and
an exposed, often exaggerated structure has obvious
parallels with buildings associated with the manufacturing
process. The Lloyds Building in London is a tour de force
of such an approach to design, though to this author it is
as unhappy in the City of London as a factory would be.
But to understand some of the more assertive aspects of

contemporary architecture, a few days spent sketching

decaying pit heads at local coal mines or dilapidated

warehouses at the dockside should prove invaluable.

The current fashion for a kind of fragmented

modernism (known as Deconstructivism) has part of its

origins in the architecture of industrial areas. The peeling

away of façade to expose the structure, the distortions of

scale and angle, and the expression of physical change or

structural impermanence are qualities frequently

encountered in factory areas or mechanical plant. When

decay has set in, these monuments to functionalism can

be romantic in the extreme, but they can also teach us

much about the role of frame, panel, fixing and assembly.

In analysing such subjects through the sketchbook, we

can gain an invaluable insight into the construction of

industrial architecture and machinery.

Nature, when it encroaches, has an interesting

relationship with the industrial landscape. Trees are rarely

planted as decorative elements – they simply seed

themselves in odd corners or high up on the outsides of

134 Understanding architecture through drawing