Architectural Drawing: The Latest Architecture and News

Facades are the first barrier outside a building. They weather rain, snow, winds, sun, and temperature changes. Their primary function is to keep interiors free of water, thermal bridges intact, and internal atmospheres as comfortable as possible. This reality is why the detailing of facades is usually done by experienced architects or specialized companies, who understand materials and construction methods well and are able to select the best solutions for each circumstance. But some projects have facades with such complex detailing, encompassing thousands and thousands of lines, hatches, and dimensions, that they inspire a particularly awestruck response. Making these drawings didactic, technical, and, above all, beautiful, is a task few can achieve to perfection. We spoke with Troy Donovan, the creator of the 188,000 follower Instagram account @the_donnies, who does this job like few others. Read the interview below.

As the foundation of any architectural design, sketches and drawings have long been known for their ability to allow the architect to interact with his/her design efficiently and express concepts intuitively. While the importance of hand drawing is understood broadly in architectural schools, what happens to those who is incapable of hand drawing? Numerous students have found it extremely difficult to cope with the intensity of hand drawing exercise during their first year in architectural training. Among these students, some would choose to quit architecture simply because they cannot draw well, some would decide to focus more on learning the techniques of computer-generalized design drawings.

Drawing as an architectural tool serves not only as a means of communication, but through drawing we can also gain a deeper understanding of the subject. To this purpose, Alessandro Luporino has created the Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture. The series of beautiful and evocative illustrations serve as companions for the book “Dictionary of Architecture,” by Nikolaus Pevsner, John Fleming, and Hugh Honor.

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Sketches are the first inkling into the design process of an architect, a way of observing and investigating a project’s development or even representing solutions for it. Through an architect’s sketches, one can better understand how a specific design move mirrors echoes throughout an entire work. Here, we have compiled sketches by Pritzker Prize winners - designers who have been awarded the highest recognization in the field of architecture - offering diverse techniques that can certainly inspire your next freehand experiment.

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The slightly trembling linework, the distinctive crossed corners, the parallel hatching, and the uppercase letters: it is undeniable that architects have developed a style of drawing over time. And though free-hand perspectives are no longer the only (or even primary) form of representation for architectural projects, they still have enormous importance during the design process. They are a design tool rather than a form of representation. 

A line that is too thick, an ill-chosen color, a disproportionate scale figure – these are all elements that can draw attention away from the things we actually want to show. Even for an unpretentious and quick sketch, some rules are very important. Some tips help turn an ordinary sketch into something you take pride in and want to show to others. Taking advantage of the huge collection of youtube videos, we have selected some content creators who dedicate themselves to sharing their expertise with the masses. 

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We all have that childhood memory of drawing a little house with a door and a window, a gabled roof, and a tree. But what sets architects apart from the rest of the population is that we continue to draw this after childhood, usually with a bit more technique. And just as our residential designs were becoming more complex and complete, the design of our trees needed to improve a bit as well (that broccoli-like shape would not please customers and teachers alike.) Although generally, trees are not the main focus of drawings, they play an important role in the composition of sketches, mainly to represent the scale, intended shading, or some intention of landscaping.

Architect Mayerlly Cuta along with the architect and visual artist Carlos Alberto Hernández founded Urban Sketchers Bogotá," a worldwide movement of drawing that promotes the practice of drawing in Bogota streets, capturing real-time life in the city.

From October 24 to November 9, an exhibition was held in homage to architect Rogelio Salmona. According to Cuta, they sought to commemorate the architect 11 years after his death by drawing his present works in the city of Bogotá. "As managers, we began to draw and promote his works. Later converting them into an exhibition. The Colombian Society of Architects and the Rogelio Salmona Foundation joined the project, leading to the Drawing to Salmona Call. This call brought together more than 100 people and collected more than 300 drawings that came from different cities in the country and the world."

The World Architecture Festival, with co-curators Make Architects and the Sir John Soane’s Museum, announced today the winners of their annual Architecture Drawing Prize, established in 2017 to recognize the “continuing importance of hand drawing, whilst also embracing the creative use of digitally produced renderings.”

Architectural print studio Desplans in collaboration with Library Illustrazioni have published the results of their architectural drawing competition titled “The Island: Between Utopia and Metaphor for Reality.” The competition asked participants to submit drawings and text interpreting the meaning of islands and utopias, considering “the double value inherent in the utopia” between aspiration and limitation.

The entries were judged by a jury of figures from Library and Desplans, with one winner and 12 honorable mentions selected. The winning entries were chosen with attention given to the relevance of the theme, dialogue between text and image, graphic research, and quality of reflection.

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The Aarhus School of Architecture has revealed the winners of their drawing competition, Drawing of the Year 2017, which asked architecture students around the globe to submit their best digital, hand-drawn or hybrid drawings under the theme of “Everyday Utopia.”

More than 230 submissions were evaluated by an esteemed jury of architects, which consisted of Moon Hoon, founder of Moon Hoon Architects; Trine Berthold, associate partner at schmidt hammer lassen; and Torben Nielsen, professor at Aarhus School of Architecture.

The jury was impressed by the “overwhelming burst of creativity and clever concepts demonstrated in the drawings,” calling out the high level of craft and experimental approaches to drawing.

Three winners were selected:

A post shared by Floorplan Man (@floorplan_man) on Nov 18, 2017 at 6:31am PST

We have all seen a floor plan before. They are typically black-and-white, and maybe some room labels, and an occasional furniture piece or two. This has been the norm for just about as long as anyone can remember, perhaps it's time to switch things up.

Filled with color, style, and spunk, Instagram account, floorplan_man isn’t your average architecture account—his feed highlights the architecture world’s most unique and creative approaches to floor plan drawings. Scrolling through his feed is like scrolling through the Pinterest page of the artsy-ist person you knew back in architecture school—it is flooded with inspiration to upgrade your generic, boring black-and-white floor plan.

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With the launch today of Apple's iOS 11—and with it, the release of the company's powerful system for augmented reality apps, ARKit—Morpholio has released a new update to their popular Trace app that allows users to sketch over photographs with perfect accuracy. While it has always been an option to sketch over photographs in Trace, the new "Perspective Finder" tool superimposes a scaled grid over the photograph that helps designers follow the perspective of the image and measure their drawings accurately.

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