Understanding Architecture Through Drawing

Chapter 24

Designing through drawing

The idea as formed in the mind was imperfect and could
only be given its consequent form through examination,
exercise of judgement, and modification of the idea
through drawing.
Leon Battista Alberti (1452), Ten Books on Architecture

The traditional view is that the objective of design is the
creation of form and the task of drawing is to give that
form some shape or expression (Alexander 1964 p15).
Hence, in modernist practice form is grounded in function
and meaning – the argument being that the legitimacy of
built form is based upon programmatic clarity (Alexander
1964 p15). As a consequence the designer must define
the problem in order to determine its functional
characteristics using the drawing process to test a variety
of form responses. According to this mechanistic
perspective the drawing helps achieve fitness between
the brief, context and other technical and physical
determinants. Being forward-looking ‘design’ is
concerned primarily with the meaningful ordering of
things in the environment using sketching, mechanical
drawing, models and CAD to map the mental diagram into
a physical reality (Lawson 1990 p173). The key question in
this chapter concerns the role of freehand drawing and
particularly how it interfaces with other media (model and

CAD) in the process of achieving excellence in

architecture. Can the drawing perform the dual task of

providing authority in a constructive as well as an artistic

sense? Put another way, are freehand drawing and

concept sketching the means to establish the marriage of

art and technology necessary in the twenty-first century?

Since built form is the solution to the design problem

brought about through the action of drawing, and given

expression by the product of drawing, how drawing is

used deserves close attention (Lawson 1994 pp141–2).

The architectural diagram and sketch drawing mediates in

the process of solving a design problem but it is not the

only tool employed (Robbins 1997). Just as how the

problem is defined influences the solution, so too the

tools used to solve the design problem have bearing on

how the problem is understood and ultimately solved. The

graphic analysis and spatial diagrams that architects

produce can be studied to see how the best fit solution is

achieved. In this regard the drawing is both a record of the

stage reached and, being a tool that is abstract and

intellectual in nature, it also opens up the inner processes

of design development to external examination. However,

the assumption that there exists a structural

correspondence between the pattern of a problem and

the drawing of a physical form that solves that problem

226 Understanding architecture through drawing