process it has altered modern sketchbook practice.
Photography has its uses but only if the architect
exercises critical judgement in its employment relative to
freehand drawing. The camera lens is no substitute for
the eye and the critical exchanges that occur in designing
between the eye, hand and paper. The freehand drawing
needs to remain at the centre of creative practice, with
the camera operating at an important but essentially
secondary level.
A potential weakness of the photographic image is the
neglect of line. In architecture, the line is a powerful force
of demarcation and the representation of architectural
order. The line is the basis for judgement and intellectual
discourse. No such comparable discipline exists in
photography until the designer imposes linear patterns
onto the image. However, the photograph is a useful tool
for exploring atmospheric effects in architecture, such as
the impact of light on an interior or the texture of
surfaces. This more spiritual dimension to design lends
itself to lens-based analysis, either as static or moving
images. Bringing together the architectural diagram
expressed in plan or section with the atmospheric
qualities of photography offers the potential to explore
design in fresh ways. The photograph provides a
subjective depth to the objectivity of the plan, allowing
design ideas to be tested beyond their intellectual
properties. In this way the combination of various
thicknesses of line used to reflect the hierarchies of
space or structure when combined with photomontage
reveals the greater whole of the embryonic design. But a
word of warning – since architecture is a discipline where
spatial ideas rather than images are the basis for plan
generation, the use of photography must take a
secondary role to that of freehand drawing. If it does not
then new designs are merely cloned versions of old ones.
With an intervention in an existing building the picture
is somewhat different. Photography allows a subject to
be examined in all its detail. The images produced form
the basis for the kind of examination denied of sketching
(unless one is highly accomplished and willing to spend
many hours in painstaking drawing). Using computer
digitisation such as photogrammetry and software
programmes like Photoshop, the images produced via the
lens can be enlarged, collaged and altered in a variety of
ways. As a result, photography can reveal what is easily
overlooked by the casual eye.
When presenting to a client or studio instructor, a
photographic presentation can evoke the spirit of a design
and cite appropriate precedent. Used in conjunction with
a sketch design drawn in plan and section, the
supplementary photographs can help complete the
picture of what the resulting building may look like. In this
way freehand drawing, mechanical rendering and
photography, when combined into a single presentation,
may provide a useful character sketch of a design project
during its evolution. Where existing buildings are
employed in this type of storyboard presentation it is
important to name the building being referred to and to
cite the architect. Students who fail to do this may be
accused of plagiarism, since visual references are as
important as literary ones.
The type of hybrid drawing where freehand sketches,
key words, formal technical renderings, CAD and
photography are combined is an increasingly common
sight in the design studio. It is the basis for most student
‘crits’ in UK schools of architecture. The hybridisation of
rendering styles reflects the growing complexity of
architectural practice and the relative decline of the plan
as the major generator of built form. The latter mirrors the
rise of postmodernism, with its emphasis upon the
section and external image. It also mirrors the
democratisation of architecture and the expanding role of
amenity groups and external stakeholders in design. For
these people new forms of representation are needed86 Understanding architecture through drawing