The Art of Architectural Drawing

First Metrobank, Manila, lobby view. (1996) T.W. Schaller. Architects: Kohn Pedersen Fox. Watercolor and pencil, 42.9cm 66.3cm A sense of strong natural light was allowed to mold and dissolve the representation of the clear architectural forms, which were themselves a subtle contrast of warm and cool tonalities.

The Large Glass: Hancocked Tower. (1990) Tamotsu Yamamoto. Graphite pencil, 76.9cm 102.5cm; Courtesy of Mr. & Mrs. Paul J. Carroll AIA. Of his subtly alarming image, Boston-based architect/artist Yamamoto states, "Marcel Duchamp added a moustache and goatee to a reproduction of the most famous painting in the world, Mona Lisa, and years later he signed an unaltered print of it, subtitling it, RaseeFrench for "shaved."

The New York Botanical Garden, Children's Adventure Garden, New York. (1995) T.W. Schaller. Architects: Richard Dattner Associates, Landscape Architect: Miceli Kulic. Watercolor, 70.2cm 93.6cm A clearly articulated, highly detailed, and small-scale oriented graphic treatment of this proposal was selected as being most suited to a project geared toward use primarily by children.

Homeless High Rise Dwelling. (1991) Luis Blanc. Wax pencil on vellum, 48.7cm 50cm Clearly, drawings of buildings can have a wider vocabulary than simply that of "building." "This drawing," writes Blanc, "is an illustrative comment on the effects of the last decade's building boom that left a glut of burnished, upscale, residential towers in Manhattan while subsidized housing lost 75% of its federal budget."

Chinatown. (1990) Christopher Grubbs. Pencil, 54.9cm 42.9cm Done largely on site shortly after the devastating San Francisco earthquake, this image captures the moonlit calm of the deserted streets with a lyrical sense of the impermanence, the fragility, and the insistence of society's claim upon Earth. The sky seems the only "positive," truly stable element of this composition, defining and supporting the light, ephemeral forms, and edges of the architecture in its timeless grasp.

Proposal for the Battersea Power Station Development Project, London. (1996) James Akers. Architects: The Rockwell Group, New York. Black prismacolor on tracing paper, 39cm 89.8cm So much of this firm's growing body of built projects depends upon visual excitement and the effective choice of intentional theatrical artifice. Not surprisingly, their approach to design is correspondingly organic and spontaneous. It is, therefore, to their great benefit that they regard gifted architectural visualists like Akers as indispensable members of a teamintegral and essential to the very process of design.

(1995) Artist/Designer: Willem van den Hoed. Watercolor, 10.2cm 15.3cm The prolific Dutch-based architect/artist, Willem van den Hoed, incessantly explores architectural form and function in log books in which he quickly jots down thoughts and impressionsmuch like in a design-based visual diary. This piece is one of a series of possible combinations of a linear base form combined with other shapes.