begun to combine them onto a single sheet, producing
drawings almost without precedent. As a result,
architecture has been liberated from the straightjacket of
orthogonal thought process of plan, section and elevation.
Part of the problem has been the relegation of drawing
under the influence of post modernism to that of
‘rendering’ and under modernism to the ‘diagram’. These
renderings were views of designed buildings in their still-
unrealised but complete state (the perspectives of Leon
Krier or Aldo Rossi are good examples). On the other
hand, at the Bauhaus students were not encouraged to
explore through drawing but rather to use paintings and
cardboard models to investigate the properties of form
and colour (Periton 1996 pp189–205). Writing in 1943
Kenneth Clark observed the decline of architectural
drawing, which he attributed to the influence of
modernism with its concerns for abstraction and the
functional diagram (Architectural Review 1943 p148). A
similar point has been made by Curtis in the context of Le
Corbusier (Curtis 1999) and Arnell and Bickford with
regard to Gehry (Arnell and Bickford 1985). Gehry has a
particular interest here because of his acknowledged debt
to Mondrian and the way his particular art-design graphic
processes are translated into digital media in order to
positively influence any subsequent architectural
drawings.
The recent rebirth of interest in drawing is largely a
manifestation of the engagement by academics in
emerging cultural and social theories of design. Here the
author is not concerned with new modes of architectural24.8a, b and c
These sketches of the square in front of Huddersfield Station test
an idea for remodelling the space.
Designing through drawing 233