The use of parallel line drawing first came into wide use for the design of military fortresses. In light of the general invasionary tendencies in the 15th and 16th centuries, impregnability was foremost on everyone’s mind. Great architects were involved in the design of fortresses. But also soldiers and engineers naturally came to play an […]
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25Aug
2014
VIEWPOINT
2014
Drawing representationally requires that a viewpoint be specified. In CAD systems, you have to pick a point in space from where the viewer’s eyes are. In the Renaissance, the viewer was given a single orientation point in the picture. When you construct a manual perspective drawing, establishing the viewer’s point is one of the first […]
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20Aug
2014
YOU CANNOT NOT DRAW HISTORY
2014
I guess one fundamental motivation for this project is to give architecture students a format with which to overcome what I continue to see as the passive teaching of architectural history. I characterize this as a flashcard mentality; all you are expected to know is the name of a building when the image is flashed […]
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18Aug
2014
OBSERVATION MAGNIFICATION
2014
The act of drawing is merely the act of seeing better. We need to find ways to see with greater magnification. A central strength of LeCorbusier is his unmatched observational ability. Part of his methodology was to apply his observational powers to historical buildings. His methodology was to reduce these buildings to their essence. It […]
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13Aug
2014
EXCEPTIONAL BARN 1
2014
There is a unique barn shape that I have only seen in Central Upstate New York. The examples that I know of are around Seneca Falls. They look very organic and wedded to the landscape. In comparison, traditional ubiquitous gable box barns look completely out of place by comparison. My first introduction to this barn […]
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11Aug
2014
THINK LIKE A BUBBLE
2014
Le Corbusier writes in Towards a New Architecture, “A building is like a soap bubble. This bubble is perfect and harmonious if the breath has been evenly distributed and regulated from the inside. The exterior is a result of an interior.” Let’s pause here for a second and repeat that. A building is like a […]
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6Aug
2014
IS ARCHITECTURE ART?
2014
In these pages, we have stated that we are not creating art in our drawings. And because we are not creating art, then we must not be artists. So if the drawings that we create are not art, then are the enclosures that result from the drawings art? The Viennese painter Hunderwasser did not think […]
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4Aug
2014
STEREOMETRIC TRANSPARENCY
2014
The stereometric method is what I would call a transparent approach to the forming of objects. Gabo created a piece titled Two Cubes (Demonstrating the Stereometric Method.) In this piece, one cube expresses the mass by forming literally a cube, with the six traditional sides. The other cube of the piece expresses the cube’s inner […]
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