Re: Architectural Drawing David Dernie Pdf 11
Sharolyn Uriegas
On Thursday 4th April I went to see the Lichtenstein exhibition at the Tate Modern and found the book Architectural Drawing by David Dernie in the gift shop. David Dernie is the dean of architecture at Westminster University. He created his book to encourage variety in architectural drawing and covers an impressive range of drawing techniques.
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- Drawing and The Material Conditions of Space
David Dernie The visualization of architectural experience is complex and resists description in a single drawing or indeed a set of drawings. As analytical tools, architectural drawings convey information but fall short of representing architectural experience because our perception of a place can only be partially communicated through conventional drawing types. Our experience of architecture is always situated and mediated through our bodies, and so our memories, associations and the broader physical and cultural context of a setting affect how we eventually interpret space. We understand places through movement and physical engagement and so it is not surprising that the richness and subtleties of architectural experience cannot be easily articulated through traditional drawing types. These tend to reduce experience to annotation as a means of conveying information.
In contrast this paper will focus on drawing as a way of thinking, at the initial stages of the design process. It will explore issues of creativity and spontaneity in architectural design in order to engage the material imagination through drawing, for architecture is always a material thing1. As such, reading architectural drawings involves the material imagination, as linear relationships are interpreted in terms of physical space. This approach will contribute to our understanding of the continuity of the architectural design process between the realm of ideas and their material embodiment. Currently we tend to take an uncertain leap when crossing between theory and material articulation. Material effects, fashionable surfaces, novelty or material codification (glass=teransparency=democracy for example) all too often substitute deeper questions of content. As the Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti observed, such superficial approaches to materials can result in "an unpleasant sense of an enlarged model, a lack of articulation of the parts at different scales: walls which seem to be made of cardboard, unfinished windows and openings: in sum a general relaxing of tension from the drawing to thebuilding."
Following a brief introduction, the book is divided into three sections: Media, Types and Places. Each section is illustrated with exemplary drawings and accompanying commentaries. Step-by-step sequences and practical tips will further help students to make the most of their newly acquired skills. This book is an indispensable practical and inspirational resource in architectural schools and practices alike.
While computers have facilitated and enriched the ways in which architects can develop and present their ideas, there is also a growing lack of skills in other forms of image-making that was traditionally furnished through training in drawing and sketching. This book focuses on the exciting possibilities for representing the built environment with all the techniques both ancient and modern that are now available. Students today need to learn the following skills: how to draw using a range of media, the basic rules of making effective spatial images, how to read a drawing, and how to express ideas through appropriate media and forms of communication. Following a brief introduction, the book is divided into three sections: Media, Types and Places. Each section is illustrated with key drawings and accompanying commentaries. Step-by-step sequences and special tips will further help students to make the most of their newly acquired skills. This book will be an indispensable practical and inspirational resource in architectural schools and practices alike.
This book celebrates the wide range of drawing techniques now available to architects. It looks at conventional and less conventional drawings and the methods used to make them in an attempt to open up creative approaches to architectural visualization. At a time when buildings and components can be wholly manufactured digitally, this book attempts to readdress the whole question of drawing as a way of thinking, a notion that is common in other visual arts. Drawings are extraordinary concentrations of visual and creative experience, synthesized through the disciplined mastery of both traditional and digital techniques. They
number of aspects of that project into focus. Analytical drawings may follow conventions, such as the use of plans and sections, or be developed as new forms of drawing or diagrams. Diagrams can helpfully reduce complex design problems to their constituent parts, and be used together with other drawings on the journey towards a synthetic design solution. As analytical tools, conventional architectural drawings convey information but fall short of representing architectural experience because our perception of a place is only partially composed of visual data.
Drawings work with reference to each other, and any combination of these three kinds of drawings will help to order ideas through the design process. At the start of a project, when themes and approaches are varied, it is especially important to keep a variety of drawing types in dialogue with other forms of representation like sketch models and other artefacts, video and photographic work. At its heart, architectural design is about synthesis: a bringing together of ideas into coherent spatial relationships. Working fluidly with different two- and three-dimensional approaches during the early stages of the design process will facilitate the development of a rich project. A great building is never the result of one single idea, nor is it the straightforward sum of many. However, the first step to a great building is interpretative drawing, which offers a path towards maintaining genuine creativity in the discipline. As the
Material DrawingsThis approach to drawings and workspace makes a connection with materials from an early stage. Combining the digital with non-screen hand drawings as an integral part of the design process helps us to explore the materiality behind our ideas. The variety of papers, drawing media and instruments brings a sense of materials into the way we work through ideas, and into the practice of architectural design. Software that simulates drawing surfaces, material effects and drawing instruments may be visually effective, but it remains detached from the materials themselves. This disengagement of visual form and materiality, which may be a product of the digital drawing process, arguably finds its built corollary in the wallpaper-like patterned skins of contemporary buildings. By repositioning the act of making drawings in the context of materials, and using materials to make two- and three-dimensional drawings, we are strengthening the ancient connection between materials and drawing, and between materials and architectural design.
Bringing together several of these themes are the hybrid drawings of Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd, whose work is representative of a new generation of architects. Their studio attempts to move conventional architectural drawings, such as sections and plans, off the page, from two-dimensional surfaces to three-dimensional constructs. The purpose of the work is to re-define and exceed the traditional limits of drawing, using new technology such as laser cutting to layer, wrap, fold and use the inherent burn from the laser cutter to convey depth and craft. Their drawings establish a tentative balance between ideas of craft while using newly established modes of design and technology, and recognizing the intrinsic linkage of drawing to innovative manufacturing techniques, transforming paper into models.
The book is in three parts: Media, Types and Places. Media explores the tools used to make drawings; it takes the position that the computer is one of a number of tools that can be used for architectural drawings, in an attempt to encourage experimentation beyond predictable software products. It discusses line drawings, render and mixed media.
The second part, Types, describes the most common drawing projections used in architectural drafting: these range from conventional projections to less conventional combinations of drawings. The final section, Places, describes three basic topographies that architectural drawings describe: interiors, landscapes and urban contexts. Each of these is illustrated with a variety of drawing types and media.
In dealing with digital media, the emphasis is to outline principles and approaches to working with certain types of processes and software types. The guides described here are meant to complement, rather than substitute, online tuition and manuals. The most fruitful way to learn technique, however, is through practical exploration, and the following section is intended to inspire a creative discovery of architectural drawing through the practice of drawing itself.
2 Precise architectural drawing requires a sharp pencil. A long lead, made by carefully sharpening the pencil with a scalpel (as opposed to a pencil sharpener) gives more accuracy. It allows the pencil to be brought tight in on a ruled edge and also means that the line weight is more even as the pencil wears.
1a. Printmaking is a rich medium for architects to discover the effective use of light and dark. The artist and printmaker Anne Desmet brings a deep understanding of the subject into her architectural works. Here, for instance, is Domus Aurea II 1991, a linocut printed in blue/black ink on off-white Japanese Kozu-shi paper. It was developed from tiny pencil and grey wash sketchbook drawings made from memory of the now-underground Golden House of Nero in Rome. It was not intended to be an accurate representation of the interior but more an evocation of some of the light effects, flashes of fresco detail and a sense of the cavernous space, silent abandonment and inky darkness.
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