User:Mdd/History of architectural drawing

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This article is a redesign by Marcel Douwe Dekker of the Architectural drawing Misplaced Pages article.

Architectural drawing is technical drawing of architecture and drawing for architectural projects. Architectural drawing are a means of communicating ideas, concepts and details, and require drafting skills in modern and traditional methods of architectural drawing.

The term Architectural plans is often used as synonym, but this term has other meaning as well. It can mean a Floor plan; more general any Scale drawing of a structure ; the complete Documentation of a building project or the plan to implement an architectural project.

Architectural drawing can includes all architectural contracts and drawings such as plot plans, floor plans, elevations, sections, details, schedules, etc., and any architectural drawing that forms a part of the contract documents. Exceptions can include mechanical, electrical and structural drawings, as well as specialized data that are normally handled by specialists in those fields.

History

Although drawing to communicate technical ideas may predate the written language, the use of drawing in architectural practice, as we know today, is relatively recent.

Early civilizations

Temple of Apollo at Didyma (c. 334 BC), contained a set of construction plans carved in marble.

The oldest architectural drawing known is a temple plan in scripted on a drawing board, part of a statue, dates from the 3th millennium BC from the city of Lagash in Babylon. From Ancient Egypt more ground plans have survived based on squared grids, as well as pictural images of the building. Sketch plans incised on flat flakes of limestone probably have been used as working guides for foremen on the job. Actual production was probably based on a mix of working form drawing and working with actual projections done to scale with cords and stakes on site.

The ancient Greeks influenced drawing through their work in geometry, and tools such as the compass and triangles used in engineering were then developed. Drawing might have been a part of the Greek architectural design and construction. For example a set of construction plans have been found scratched into the marble for the Temple of Apollo at Didyma. On the construction site Stone masons also worked with detailed verbal descriptions set down by the architect. In Roman architecture the plan, the elevation, and some kind of perspective were used by architects and patrons in their communication. But all together architural drawing didn't play a dominent role in design and building construction.

Middle Ages

From Ancient times drawing was one of the techniques architects used to design buildings, and this probably did not shift much after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the work of he medieval master mason drawing remained one of it's significant skills. Roman and Byzantine architects have made project drawings from which buildings could be constructed, but it remains questionable wheter they were used in early medieval west.

One of few surviving medieval architectural drawing from the period between the fall of the Rome and the 13th century is the Plan of Saint Gall, a architectural drawing of a monastic compound dating from the early 9th century. The Plan depicts an entire Benedictine monastic compound including churches, houses, stables, kitchens, workshops, brewery, infirmary, and even a special house for bloodletting. The Plan was never actually built, and was so named because it was kept at the famous medieval monastery library of the Abbey of St. Gall, where it remains to this day.

Modern architectural drawing and the use of drawings to record and transmit architectural ideas came into being at the time when Gothic construction began to decline. When Chartres was build architectural drawings as controlling documents in the design process had only just come into use.

Renaissance

The beginning of contemporary technical drawing originates from 15th century renaissance artists like the Italian Architect Filippo Brunelleschi, who in about 1415 demonstrated the geometrical method of perspective, used today by artists, by painting the outlines of various Florentine buildings onto a mirror. Leonardo da Vinci further developed perspective and technical drawing, using geometric principles from famous Greek mathematicians like Pythagoras of Samos, and Euclid of Alexandria. In the 18th century the mathematician Gaspard Monge developed descriptive geometry, when designing a complicated fortress in a star shape using orthographic projection. Early 19th century isometric drawing was introduced by the Englishman William Farish.

18th century

The 18th century architectural practice technical drawing had become the normal medium for design. Architects were among the first design discipline to make use of conventions of plan, elevation and section in design and production control. It was the scale of the projects and number of crafts involved, that called for a separation between design and construction. By the time the Industrial revolution began, these architectural conventions were readily available to engineers.

Eventually the development of the computer had a mayor impact on the methods used to design and create technical drawings.

Types of Architectural drawings

Site plan

A site plan is an architectural plan, and a detailed engineering drawing of proposed improvements to a given lot. A site plan usually shows a building footprint, travel ways, parking, drainage facilities, sanitary sewer lines, water lines, trails, lighting, and landscaping.

Such a plan of a site is a graphic representation of the arrangement of buildings, parking, drives, landscaping and any other structure that is part of a development project.

A site plan is a set of construction drawings that a builder or contractor uses to make improvements to a property. Counties can use the site plan to verify that development codes are being met and as a historical resource. Site plans are often prepared by a design consultant who must be either an licensed engineer, architect, landscape architect or land survey.

Floor plan

A floor plan in architecture and building engineering is a diagram, usually to scale, of the relationships between rooms, spaces and other physical features at one level of a structure. Dimensions are usually drawn between the walls to specify room sizes and wall lengths. Floor plans will also include details of fixtures like sinks, water heaters, furnaces, etc. Floor plans will include notes to specify finishes, construction methods, or symbols for electrical items.

Similar to a map in an floor plan the orientation of the view is downward from above, but unlike a conventional map, a plan is understood to be drawn at a particular vertical position (commonly at about 3 feet above the floor). Objects below this level are seen, objects at this level are shown 'cut' in plan-section, and objects above this vertical position within the structure are omitted or shown dashed. Plan view or "planform" is defined as a vertical orthographic projection of an object on a horizontal plane, like a map.

Architectural elevation

Architectural elevations are orthographic projections of a 3-dimensional obuildings and structures from the position of a horizontal plane beside an object. In other words, an elevation is a side-view as viewed from the front, back, left or right. An elevation is a common method of depicting the external configuration and detailing of a 3-dimensional object in two dimensions. Building façades are shown as elevations in architectural and technical drawing.

Elevations are the most common orthographic projection for conveying the appearance of a building from the exterior. Perspectives are also commonly used for this purpose. A building elevation is typically labeled in relation to the compass direction it faces; the direction from which a person views it. E.g. the North Elevation of a building is the side that most closely faces true north on the compass.

Architectural cutaway

Architectural cutaways are architectural drawings of buildings or ensembles, where parts of the facade are not shown in order to allow to show the inside. The convention of the rough architectural cutaway can be used to create a more intense dialogue between exterior and interior. This can often possess a far richer visual experience than the facade it excises. Architectural cutaway illustrate architectural details with 3D sketches and annotations.

Technical details are often represented in a cross section. This is an orthographic projection of a 3-dimensional object from the position of a plane through the object. A floor plan is a section viewed from the top. In such views, the portion of the object in front of the plane is omitted to reveal what lies beyond. In the case of a floor plan, the roof and upper portion of the walls may be omitted.

Architectural diagram

Architectural diagrams are diagrams, that simple graphic explaining certain architectural subjects or elements, for example a cathedral diagram. Diagrams are essential representations for thinking, problem solving, and communication in the design disciplines, in particular those concerned with making physical form.

Architectural design is ultimately about the configurations, connections, shape, and orientations of physical forms. Diagrams can be used to resolve spatial layout concerns, but can also represent forces and flows. For example the forces of sun and wind, or the flows of people and materials through a building. In the early phases of the design architects can use these diagrams to develop, explore, and communicate ideas and solutions.

Architectural isometrie

Isometric projection is a form of graphical projection—more specifically, a form of axonometric projection. It is a method of visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions, in which the three coordinate axes appear equally foreshortened and the angles between any two of them are 120°. Isometric projection is one of the projections used in drafting engineering drawings.

An isometry is a transformation which leaves all distances between points unchanged. If a motif (or pattern) is acted on by an isometry its 'basic shape' is preserved, only its position and orientation are altered. Geometric figures which can be related by an isometry are called congruent. Isometries can be used to create designs. In particular reflections and rotations applied to a simple motif can produce interesting designs, which can then be translated to produce an attractive frieze, or tiling effect. Many architectural features can be analyzed in terms of isometries.

Architectural perspective

Perspective in drawing is an approximate representation on a flat surface of an image as it is perceived by the eye. Of the many types of perspective drawings, the most common categorizations of artificial perspective are:\

The names of these categories refer to the number of vanishing points in the perspective drawing.

Aerial perspective refers to the effect on the appearance of an ordinary object of being viewed through the atmosphere. In daylight, as an ordinary object gets further from the eye, its contrast with the background is reduced, its colour saturation is reduced, and its colour becomes more blue.

Architectural sketch

A sketch is a rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not intended as a finished work. In general, a sketch is a quick way to record an idea for later use. Architect's sketches primarily serve as a way to try out different ideas and establish a composition before undertaking a more finished work, especially when the finished work is expensive and time consuming.

Architectural sketches are a kind of diagrams. These sketches, like metaphors, are used by architects as a mean of communication in aiding design collaboration. This tool helps architects to abstract attributes of hypothetical provisional design solutions and summarize their complex patters, hereby enhancing the design process.

Other types

Layout plan with elevations and floor plans
Architectural sections
Architectural visualization drawings Architectural visualization drawings
Detail drawing
Survey drawing
Schematic architectural drawings
Construction prints

Drawing styles and techniques

The range of hand-rendered and computer-generated drawing styles and techniques for architectural drawing contains.

Tools as drawing board, vellum, blueprint,
Architect's scale
Layers in a standard architectural drawing
Technical lettering, typography, and line types
Perspective view development
Light, shade, and shadow
Delineating and rendering entourage
Architectural rendering is the art of creating two-dimensional images showing the attributes of a proposed architectural design.
Architectural animation is usually a short architectural movie created on a computer. A computer-generated building(s) is created along with landscaping and sometimes moving people and vehicles. Unlike an architectural rendering, which is a single image from a single camera point of view, an architectural animation is a series of hundreds or even thousands of still images made by a moving camera.
Presentation formats

Employment

An architectural illustrator is an artist who creates imagery for the design professional that accurately portray the details of an architectural project. These images are used to communicate design ideas to clients, owners, committees, customers, and the general public.

A career as an architectural illustrator combines the traditional skills of rendering with advanced computer graphics. The profession of architectural illustration challenges creative individuals who enjoy working with architects and other design professionals, who are interested in an increasing understanding of the design and building process, who recognize the value of high quality design, and who are proactive in applying a complete visual communications spectrum to achieve the design goals

References

GLOSSARY The Rooms Provincial Archives. Accessed 10 Feb 2009.
Glossary of Terms. triangleofficeguide.com. Accessed 10 Feb 2009.
^ Edward Robbins and Edward Cullinan (1994) Why Architects Draw. MIT Press, ISBN 0262181576. p.10.
^ Gary R. Bertoline et al. (2002) Technical Graphics Communication‎. p.12.
Lothar Haselberger (1985). "The Construction Plans for the Temple of Apollo at Didyma" In: Scientific American. 253(6), 126-132.
^ David Turnbull (2000). Masons, tricksters and cartographers : comparative studies in the sociology of scientific and indigenous knowledge. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9057024993 p.61.
Lon R. Shelby (1981) "The Contractors of Chartres." Gesta 20.1 (1981): 173-78.
Ken Baynes, Francis Pugh (1981) The Art of the Engineer‎. James Clarke & Co., 1981. ISBN 0718825063. p.31.
Department of Building and Development Land Development. Loudoun County Government. Accessed 11 Feb 2009.
Frequently Asked Questions Miami Township. Accessed 11 Feb 2009.
Site Planning Process Chesterfield County, Virginia Planning Department. Accessed 11 Feb 2009.
Clit, Frank (1985), Architectural Graphics - Second Edition, New Wank: Van Norstrand Reinhold, ISBN 0442218621
Andreas C. Papadakis (1988). Deconstruction in Architecture: In Architecture and Urbanism‎. p.65.
^ Ellen Yi-Luen Do†& Mark D. Gross (2001). "Thinking with diagrams in architectural design". In: Artificial Intelligence Review 15: 135-149, 2001.
Barbara De La Rue & Frances Goldman (2000), "Transformations and Symmetries" Web article University of Glasgow. Accessed 11 Feb 2009.
^ Richard Boland and Fred Collopy (2004). Managing as designing. p.69.
Rendow Yee (2002). Architectural Drawing: A Visual Compendium of Types and Methods. 2th Edition. Wiley, 2002.