Understanding Architecture Through Drawing

photographer, a drawing permits the artist to exercise a
discerning eye, adding or subtracting detail to the benefit
of the sketch.
Building designers play with various ingredients to
produce a satisfactory piece of architecture. They have
proportion, colour, outline, texture, harmony, shadow and
framing at their disposal. Likewise, artists should seek out
these qualities within the object or subject they are
tackling, and exploit them in the drawing. After all, there is
no better way of getting to know a subject than drawing
it, and no better way of remembering what it is really like
beneath the surface appearance.
Some modern buildings are highly abstract in
appearance and often rather minimal in detail. These
buildings derive from the legacy of the International Style,

which began in the 1920s and put machine production

and functional logic before craftmanship or individual

human needs. Such buildings require a different approach

to being rendered through architectural drawing than do

more traditional townscapes. Here you will find a ruler

useful and perhaps a circle template, and the use of dark

shade and dramatic highlighting may also be helpful.

Similarly, small areas of bright colour may enliven the

drawing, and give a dull building a focus of interest.

Whatever drawing technique is employed, it is important

to think hard about composition before starting to draw,

and to try to enter into the spirit of the period of the

subject before putting pencil to paper. An abstract

modernist building may well suit a cool, almost cerebral,

style of drawing. On the other hand, a Brutalist building of

6.2

This sketch of a street in

Florence focuses upon the

walling elements and surface

textures. The use of shade and

shadow helps enhance the

appearance of three dimensions,

thereby better expressing the

main architectural components.

Unnecessary detail has been

left out.

52 Understanding architecture through drawing