How architectural drawings emerged as aesthetic objects, promoted by a network of galleries, collectors, and institutions, and how this changed the understanding of architecture. Prior to the 1970s, buildings were commonly understood to be the goal of architectural practice; architectural drawings were seen simply as a means to an end. But, just as the boundaries of architecture itself were shifting at the end of the twentieth century, the perception of architectural drawings was also shifting; they began to be seen as autonomous objects outside the process of building. In Drawing on Architecture, Jordan Kauffman offers an account of how architectural drawings—promoted by a network of galleries and collectors, exhibitions and events—emerged as aesthetic objects and ultimately attained status as important cultural and historical artifacts, and how this was both emblematic of changes in architecture and a catalyst for these changes. Kauffman traces moments of critical importance to the evolution of the perception of architectural drawings, beginning with exhibitions that featured architectural drawings displayed in ways that did not elucidate buildings but treated them as meaningful objects in their own right. When architectural drawings were seen as having intrinsic value, they became collectible, and Kauffman chronicles early collectors, galleries, and sales. He discusses three key exhibitions at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York; other galleries around the world that specialized in architectural drawings; the founding of architecture museums that understood and collected drawings as important cultural and historical artifacts; and the effect of the new significance of architectural drawings on architecture and architectural history. Drawing on interviews with more than forty people directly involved with the events described and on extensive archival research, Kauffman shows how architectural drawings became the driving force in architectural debate in an era of change.

Drawings, doodles, and ideograms argue with ferocity and wit for traditional urbanism and architecture. Architect Léon Krier's doodles, drawings, and ideograms make arguments in images, without the circumlocutions of prose. Drawn with wit and grace, these clever sketches do not try to please or flatter the architectural establishment. Rather, they make an impassioned argument against what Krier sees as the unquestioned doctrines and unacknowledged absurdities of contemporary architecture. Thus he shows us a building bearing a suspicious resemblance to Norman Foster's famous London “gherkin” as an example of “priapus hubris” (threatened by detumescence and “priapus nemesis”); he charts “Random Uniformity” (“fake simplicity”) and “Uniform Randomness” (“fake complexity”); he draws bloated “bulimic” and disproportionately scrawny “anorexic” columns flanking a graceful “classical” one; and he compares “private virtue” (modernist architects' homes and offices) to “public vice” (modernist architects' “creations”). Krier wants these witty images to be tools for re-founding traditional urbanism and architecture. He argues for mixed-use cities, of “architectural speech” rather than “architectural stutter,” and pointedly plots the man-vehicle-landneed ratio of “sub-urban man” versus that of a city dweller. In an age of energy crisis, he writes (and his drawings show), we “build in the wrong places, in the wrong patterns, materials, densities, and heights, and for the wrong number of dwellers”; a return to traditional architectures and building and settlement techniques can be the means of ecological reconstruction. Each of Krier's provocative and entertaining images is worth more than a thousand words of theoretical abstraction.

An elegant presentation of stunning and inspiring architectural drawings from antiquity to the present day Throughout history, architects have relied on drawings both to develop their ideas and communicate their vision to the world. This gorgeous collection brings together more than 250 of the finest architectural drawings of all time, revealing each architect's process and personality as never before. Creatively paired to stimulate the imagination, the illustrations span the centuries and range from sketches to renderings, simple to intricate, built projects to a utopian ideal, famous to rarely seen - a true celebration of the art of architecture. Visually paired images draw connections and contrasts between architecture from different times, styles, and places. From Michelangelo to Frank Gehry, Louise Bourgeois to Tadao Ando, B.V. Doshi to Zaha Hadid, and Grafton to Luis Barragán, the book shows the incredible variety and beauty of architectural drawings. Drawing Architecture is ideal for art and architecture lovers alike, as well as anyone interested in the intersection of creativity and history. From the publisher of Exhibit A: Exhibitions that Transformed Architecture, 1948-2000.

Architecture through Drawing examines how drawing - as both action and object - encapsulates complex ideas relating to culture, technology, space and the built environment. Bringing together an array of beautiful and rarely seen drawings dating from the sixteenth century to the present day, all representing different geographical locations, techniques, methodologies and purposes, the book defines a new field for the subject of the drawing in architecture. It reveals the motives for architectural drawing beyond the requirement to document the processes that underpin the realisation of the architectural object. This book asks, fundamentally, whether drawings can illuminate new interpretations of architectural experimentation. Examples range from initial sketches by architects to analytical and construction drawings, perspectives and schematics, collage and more complex presentations and paintings often carried out in association with others. Dialogues include Fabrizio Ballabio on Filippo Juvarra's Ottoboni Theatre; Desley Luscombe on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Mark Dorrian on Michael Webb; Nicholas Olsberg on Victorian architects William Butterfield, Norman Shaw and GE Street; Charles Rice on James Gowan; Laurent Stalder on perspective in postwar housing; Helen Thomas on the covers of San Rocco; John Macarthur on clouds; Markus Lähteenmaäki on Superstudio; and Erik Wegerhoff on the Viennese Auto-Expander. The volume is rounded off with an epilogue, 'The Limits of Drawing', by Adrian Forty and Sophie Read.

Collects pages from the private sketchbooks of architects and studios from around the world, and includes comments from the artists as well as details on how they use sketching to evolve inspirations and concepts into more developed ideas.

Drawing is an important means to analyse information and develop rigorous arguments both conceptually and visually. Going beyond the how-to drawing manual, this book provides an instrumental approach to drawing, especially computer-generated drawings; it outlines how drawings should be used to convey clear and analytical information in the process of design, as well as the communication and discussion of a project. In depth examples are provided how to communicate effectively. The final section demonstrates how to transform case-studies, directly connecting an analytical approach with the design process.

We are in the second decade of the 21st century and, as with most things, the distinction between digital and analogue has become tired and inappropriate. This is also true in the world of architectural drawing, which paradoxically is enjoying a renaissance supported by the graphic dexterity of the computer. This new fecundity has produced a contemporary glut of stunning architectural drawings and representations that could rival the most recent outpouring of architectural vision in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, there is much to learn by comparing the then and the now. The contemporary drawing is often about its ability to describe the change, fluctuations and mutability of architecture in relation to the virtual/real 21st-century continuum of architectural space. Times have changed, and the status of the architectural drawing must change with them. This reassessment is well overdue, and this edition of AD will be the catalyst for such re-examination. Features the work of: Pascal Bronner, Bryan Cantley, Peter Cook, Perry Kulper, CJ Lim, Tom Noonan, Dan Slavinsky, Neil Spiller, Peter Wilson, Nancy Wolf, Lebbeus Woods and Mas Yendo. Contributors include: Nic Clear, Mark Garcia, Simon Herron and Mark Morris.