DRAWING FROM PHOTOS
Most architectural educators continue to tell students that you should not draw from photographs. The general line of thinking is that since a photo is a 2D image, it is too far removed from...
Author: Kurt
WHY. NOT HOW
Paul Lauseau, author of Graphic Thinking for Architects and Designers, muses the following in the second edition of his excellent resource, “…it occurs to me that most of what I have written deals with...
INDIGENOUS PERFECTION
I happened to take a drive a couple of evenings ago. The late afternoon was warm and it was good to be driving rural roads. After 25 years of living up here, it is...
BUCKY FULLER
Buckminster Fuller is a supreme systems thinker. He argued from day one that to understand the part, you have to understand the whole. Early in his education, he rebelled against the manner in which...
JOGGING FOR BUILDINGS
Lockard in his book Design Drawing states, “Designers must be professional perceivers. They must learn to perceive their environment comprehensively…” “Drawing is a primary means of developing this needed perceptual ability.” (1) When you...
MILITARY AXONOMETRIC
The use of parallel line drawing first came into wide use for the design of military fortresses. In light of the general invasionary tendencies in the 15th and 16th centuries, impregnability was foremost on...
YOU CANNOT NOT DRAW HISTORY
I guess one fundamental motivation for this project is to give architecture students a format with which to overcome what I continue to see as the passive teaching of architectural history. I characterize this...
EXCEPTIONAL BARN 1
There is a unique barn shape that I have only seen in Central Upstate New York. The examples that I know of are around Seneca Falls. They look very organic and wedded to the...
IS ARCHITECTURE ART?
In these pages, we have stated that we are not creating art in our drawings. And because we are not creating art, then we must not be artists. So if the drawings that we...
STEREOMETRIC TRANSPARENCY
The stereometric method is what I would call a transparent approach to the forming of objects. Gabo created a piece titled Two Cubes (Demonstrating the Stereometric Method.) In this piece, one cube expresses the...
FORM AND ENCLOSURE = FORCLOSURE
The duality of the interior and the exterior has bedeviled Architects from just about day 1. As we have seen elsewhere in this study, LeCorbusier tried to solve this dilemma by urging us to...
INLET GUIDE VANE ASSEMBLY – INSPIRATION
Be inspired by anything. I have a penchant for mechanical technology. I love airplanes, engines, etc. Whatever you might have a strong affinity for, go with it. You might really like Ming Dynasty vases....
THE BAUHAUS
The Bauhaus is another school of design thinking that we need to be aware of. Walter Gropius took control of the school in 1919 and gave it the name Staatliches Bauhaus, or what we...
CHOISEY ONE POINT
Auguste Choisey, as we have seen, was a profound thinker. And he assiduously believed that his type of axonometric was the only way to draw. To recap, a Choisey Axonometric is the one where...
STUDENT TRANSPARENT DRAWING
I taught both design and gave a lecture survey course last fall. My goal in the course was to give a broad pictorial overview of architecture. And as you might guess, I had the...
AEG TRANSPARENCY
As we have seen, I have a problem with iconic architectural images. When I was in architecture school and the AEG Turbine Building by Behrens (1908) was discussed, in every instance I was presented...
PROJECT AN OBJECT OUT OF MOON
In Vers Une Architecture, LeCorbusier states. “The plan proceeds from within to without; the exterior is the result of an interior. The elements of architecture are light and shade, walls and space.” The plan...
THE CHINESE AND THE JESUITS
From The Mustard Seed Manual of Painting. 1679. Eastern artists, such as the ancient Chinese, did not accept the linear perspective. The Jesuit missionaries found that when the Chinese were shown images with...
SKETCHING IN THE WAKE (LITERALLY) OF LECORBUSIER
The Topkapi Palace as seen from the east. LeCorbusier I felt LeCorbusier’s presence in Turkey. And this was before I realized that Turkey was an inspiration for him. I always knew that his travels...
ON REALISM – A LETTER TO HELEN
Why not draw realistically? After all, a basic tenant of realism is that it represents truth. A completely natural drawing is done without any outside artifice. Forms, textures, shadows, etc. are all rendered...
CHOISEY TRANSPARENCY
A Choisey projection is one in which the observer is looking up at the interior of the building. It takes the floor plan, and projects with parallel lines the spacial interior. The basic beauty...
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