The Art of Architectural Drawing

South Orange County Regional Civic Center, California. (1992) Elizabeth Ann Day. Architects: Albert C. Martin with Vitetta Group. Watercolor, 101.4cm 74.1cm Information through color usage is as much the essential idea of this work as is any structural form; thus, the warm roof tones frame primary spaces and axes. The composite of several views adds focus and enhances the overall narrative success.

China Airport. Georgeanne Deen. Architect: Kanner Associates. Gouache, 17cm 25cm

Pollyea House. Georgeanne Deen. Architect: Kanner Associates. Gouache, 20cm 30cm The landscape and urban-allegory paintings from the 1930s of American Thomas Hart Benton (to say nothing of numerous more modern pop culture references!) echo through the work of this unique artist. By unusual composition and use of skewed perspective, Los Angeles-based artist Georgeanne Deen captures the exuberant intent of the design architects in a witty and entirely appropriate manner.

Compositional Invention of Diverse Volumes with Decorative Coloring. (1933) Artist/Designer: Iakov Georgievich Chernikov (18891951). Color lithograph (lithographer unknown), 24.0cm 35.4cm; Courtesy of Centre d'Architecture Canadien/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. One of the most prolific and influential protagonists of the Russian Constructivist movement, Chernikov produced some 17,000 drawings of imaginary designs and in excess of fifty books of architectural theory and graphics. He firmly believed in the necessity of architectural graphic representation in mankind's attempt to effectively shape the future.

Proposed Corporate Headquarters, Armonk, New York. (1995) T.W. Schaller. Architects: Kohn Pedersen Fox. Watercolor and pencil, 42.9cm 66.3cm A slightly distant and decidedly horizontal visual treatment of this schematic design was chosen to contrast with the verticality and emphasize the calm of the heavily wooded earth-bound site.

Compact Disc Cover, The Four Nation's Ensemble. (1992) T.W. Schaller. Watercolor, 25cm 25cm The attempt of a lyrical "Piranesian" conceit was most communicative of the tone of the early Romantic compositions of the musical program.

Ojo de Dios, Taos, New Mexico. (19881996) Artist/Designer: Paul Stevenson Oles FAIA. Various media. An on-going project for an eventual family "Taos Haos," the plan impetus for this design came from a Mexican Huichol Indian tradition. Upon the birth of a child, a father would begin weaving in yarn on a cross of sticks, an "Ojo de Dios" (god's eye), as a charm to ward off evil. A harmonius blend of hand-done and computer imagery combine in both the planning and presentation of this design by one of the master visualists of our day.

Ars Recte Aedifscandi. (CA. 1990) Artist/Designer: Thomas Norman Rajkovich. Watercolor and ink wash, 51.2cm 61.5cm "In his De Re Aedificatoria," writes Rajkovich, "the fifteenth-century architect and theorist Leon Battista Alberti describes the fundamental compositional elements of architecture: column and beam (trabeation), wall and arch, and roof. This proposal for a market loggia is designed as a study in the combination of those elements as they recall the tectonic origins of classical architecture."

Civitas Navigabilis. (CA. 1990) Artist/Designer: Thomas Norman Rajkovich. Watercolor and ink wash, 92.3cm 117.9cm Of his rich urban invention, modern classicist Rajkovich writes, "A true renaissance of the classical city today requires an understanding of the critical symbolic and perspectival relationships which buildings and monuments form with one another . . . This drawing is intended as an idealized demonstration of what is possible; that the observer might aspire to comprehend, construct, and inhabit Paradise."