In the 20th century and throughout the history of the discipline, drawing has been the
dominant means of architectural communication and is considered to be the “language”
Entries A–F 103
of architecture. Through drawings, an architect can record new ideas, concepts, and even
visionary projects in addition to projects intended for construction. To facilitate this
communication, a number of drawing conventions have evolved.
Orthographic Projections
The most commonly used projective drawing in 20th-century architectural practice is the
orthographic projection. The primary orthographic projections are plan, section, and
elevation views in which the observer’s line of sight is perpendicular to both the drawing
plane and the surfaces of the building viewed and in which the drawing surface is parallel
to the principal surfaces of the building. The floor plan and building section are both
sections, or cuts. The floor plan, a sectional view looking down after a horizontal plane,
cut through the building with the top section removed, typically shows the location of
major vertical elements and all door and window openings. Building sections are
transverse or cross sections or longitudinal. A transverse section is created by cutting at
right angles to the long axis, and conversely, a longitudinal section is an orthographic
projection made by cutting at right angles to the shorter axis. Elevations are drawings of
the exterior of a building and are labeled north, south, east, or west for the direction from
which you see it (which is also the direction it faces). As no single orthographic
projection can communicate all aspects of a threedimensional object, the drawings must
be considered as a series of related views. The advantage of an orthographic projection is
that the faces of an object parallel to the drawing surface are represented without
distortion or foreshortening, retaining their true size to scale, their shape, and their
proportion.
Pictorial Projections
This type of drawing shows the three dimensions of a building simultaneously. They are
generally divided into parallel and perspective drawings. The most common parallel
drawings are oblique and isometric. Oblique projections can be further subdivided into
plan and elevation oblique projections. The plan oblique, or axonometric, is the most
popular of the parallel (or paraline) drawings. A scale drawing of the plan is tilted at
either a 45-degree angle giving equal views of two perpendicular planes or a 30/60-
degree angle giving emphasis to one plane over the other. All lines parallel to the three
main axes are drawn to scale.
Perspective drawings employ various techniques for representing three-dimensional
objects on a two-dimensional surface in a more realistic manner than paraline drawings.
All points of the object are projected to a picture plane by straight lines converging at an
arbitrary fixed point. In a one-point perspective, a principal face of the object is parallel
to the picture plane. Vertical lines remain vertical, horizontal lines remain horizontal, and
lines perpendicular to the picture plane converge on a vanishing point. In two-point
perspective, vertical lines remain vertical and both sets of horizontal lines converge on
their own vanishing points.
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 104
At different points in the 20th century, preferences for various drawing types and
rendering techniques have been inextricably linked with artistic movements. The birth of
the Modern Movement early in the century and the influence of Cubism resulted in the
rejection of architectural perspective drawing in favor of the more analytical and
objective axonometric plan projections, which were considered more appropriate for an
architecture cubic in nature and devoid of ornamentation. In fact, several movements in
the first half of the century were known primarily through the production and circulation
of architectural drawings and not as a result of built works. The break with tradition that
characterized Modernism was also evident in the graphic representation of the movement.
One of the early 20th-century movements that was expressed primarily through
drawings was Futurism. The theoretical focus of Futurism, the Italian architectural
movement founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), was made
manifest through graphic representations of industrial buildings, skyscrapers, and
Utopian visions of the city of the future. These images glorified technology, machines,
speed, dynamism, and movement. The fact that drawings of futuristic cities by architects
such as Antonio Sant’Elia (1888–1916) do not include plans underscores the notion that
they were never intended for construction.
Architects of the De Stijl movement (1917–28) relied heavily on the use of
axonometric projections to illustrate the development of spaces. The antihistorical
movement advocated a clarity of expression through the use of straight lines,
decomposed cubes, pure planes, right angles, and primary colors. These qualities were
effectively represented in the orthographic projections, which were repeatedly published
and exhibited.
Similarly, Russian avant-garde architecture of the revolutionary era (1917–34) is
known principally through drawings of work that, in many cases, was neither structurally
viable nor ever intended for construction. The new relationship between architecture and
the plastic arts that was central to De Stijl was also prevalent in the Russian architectural
drawings. The formal language of the architecture followed explorations in the fine arts.
Visionary drawings by Iakov Chernikov (1889–1951) celebrated technology and
demonstrated the possibilities of constructivist design to contemporary and subsequent
generations of architects.
The Expressionist movement, affected by unstable conditions in Germany after the
First World War, is characterized by drawings that emphasize force and massiveness.
Buildings were conceived in terms of volume, and drawings by Erich Mendelsohn
(1887–1953) and others were devoid of the detail found in earlier architectural
representation.
In 1975 an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York of drawings from
the archives of the École des BeauxArts exposed a new generation of architects and
designers to the meticulous watercolor renderings that had been supplanted earlier in the
century by axonometric projections. The contemporary Postmodern once again used
historical forms as a source of design inspiration and the movement was characterized by
a resurgence in the Beaux- Arts style of rendering and the architectural drawing, as objet d’a rt,
became important in its own right removed from the context of built work.
With the advent of Deconstruction late in the 20th century, the language of technology
was concerned with breaking, splintering, diagonal overlapping, and superimposition of
Entries A–F 105
elements, and again, as in previous periods, these formal aspects of the architecture were
reflected in the drawings of architects such as Bernard Tschumi (1944-).
Undoubtedly, the method of graphic representation that will have the greatest
influence on the future generation of architects is that involving the use of the computer.
Computer-aided design, three-dimensional modeling, and programs allowing a client to
“walk through” a space that does not yet exist in reality are revolutionizing the way in
which architects conceive of and represent space. Computers have transformed the design
process into one of continuous and nearly limitless experimentation.
ARCHIGRAM
Architecture firm, England
Archigram is both a group of British architects and their architectural periodical,
which gave the group its name. Between 1960 and 1972, Archigram published nine
issues of the periodical, staged exhibitions and conferences, and devised a number of
influential architectural projects. Founded by Peter Cook (1936-), the group consisted of
Cook, David Greene (1937-), Mike Webb (1937-), Warren Chalk (1927–88), Dennis
Crompton (1935-), and Ron Herron (1930–94). Their avantgarde architecture rejected
heroic modernism in favor of expendable, variable, and often mobile combinations of
component units plugged into superstructures. Although Archigram gained worldwide
recognition, their Utopian project owed much to the intense architectural debate
fermented by the massive rebuilding projects of postwar Britain. The group drew on
eclectic sources, including R.Buckminster Fuller, the Independent Group, Reyner
Banham, comic books, science fiction, consumer imagery, and contemporary technology,
such as the Tels tar satellite, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s mobile
launch towers, and the more modest Airstream trailer.
In late 1960, Cook, Greene, and Webb began meeting in an effort to perpetuate the
vibrant intellectual climate that they had experienced at architecture school. Their
publication both augmented their activities, providing a forum for ideas as well as a
publication venue for student work, and gave the group its name. Archigram not only suggested the
immediacy of a telegram or an aerogram (i.e. “archi[tecture]-gram”) and the urgency of
their ideas but also described the broadsheet format of the fledgling publication. The first
issue, published in 1961, featured both Greene’s poetry and a collage composed of
provocative statements that wound around and through images of architectural projects, a
metaphor for the group’s desire to break down traditional barriers between form and
statement. The document proclaimed their response to postwar British architecture: “we
have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image/which is an insult to functionalism”
Entries A–F 101
in favor of organic forms that “flow,” signaling their enduring interest in the inventive
use of architecture to foster communication.
By 1963 the group had coalesced. That year they produced both Archigram 3 and the Living City exhibition,
staged at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London). Archigram 3 celebrated expendability,
claiming that the change in “user-habits” occasioned by expendable items such as food
packaging should prompt a comparable change in “user-habitats,” an argument for
“throwaway architecture” that would mirror the consumerist lifestyle of the late 20th
century. Inspired by William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, Li ving City examined the urban matrix of
which architecture was but one component. The group claimed that “when it is raining in
Oxford Street, the architecture is no more important than the rain, in fact the weather has
probably more to do with the pulsation of the living city at a moment in time” (Living Arts 2 [June
1963]). The installation comprised seven “Gloops,” spaces that defined constituent
elements of the living city, such as Communications, Crowd, and Movement. This “city
stimulator,” a Postmodern pastiche inspired by the Independent Group’s This Is Tomor row exhibition,
installed at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London) in 1956, urged the spectator toward an
awareness of the vitality and the value of city life. Both Archigram 3 and Living City consolidated the group’s
conviction that modernist architecture mistakenly prioritized heroic permanent structures
over the user’s changing needs, thereby failing to respond to contemporary
developments, such as technology, the consumer economy, and modern communications.
With Archigram 4 (1964), the group embarked on a series of celebrated projects that revolved
around the notion of individual capsules that clipped onto or plugged into a structural
framework. These capsules were mobile, expendable, and responsive to human desires,
thereby embodying Archigram’s central concerns. Cook’s Entertainments Tower (1963),
an entertainment center proposed for the Montreal Exposition (1967), consisted of a
concrete tower on which hung facilities (such as an auditorium) that could be removed or
replaced after the exposition. Similarly, his Plug-In City, a series of ideas developed
between 1962 and 1966, proposed expendable capsules plugged into the network
structure by means of integrated cranes. In 1964 Herron proposed Walking City, mobile
megastructures that walked across both sea and land on robotic, spiderlike legs.
Subsequent projects deployed these ideas on a smaller and perhaps more attainable scale.
Webb proposed the Cushicle (1966–67), a personalized enclosure that enabled a human
to carry a complete environment in a backpack that inflated when needed, and the
Suitaloon (1968), a space suit that inflated to serve as a minimal house. These projects
enabled the consumer to construct a personalized environment, free of the strictures of
modernist architecture.
Archigram 4 not only initiated a series of celebrated projects but also brought the group
worldwide attention. Pages were widely reproduced in magazines, providing the model
for other anti-architecture groups, such as the Italian Archizoom group, and group
members were invited to lecture worldwide. In 1966 they organized the International
Dialogues on Experimental Architecture (IDEA), an exhibition and conference in
Folkestone, Kent, England, which attracted notable speakers. In 1967 the Weekend Telegraph
commissioned Archigram to design a house for the year 1990 and received a structure
that could be adjusted to accommodate various daily activities, which was exhibited at
Harrods in London. Archigram was invited to exhibit at both the 1968 Milan Triennale
and Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. In 1970 the group was invited by the Ministre d’Etat of
Monaco to participate in a limited competition for a seaside entertainment center in
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 102
Monte Carlo. True to the group’s anti-heroic stance, their winning project was an
underground structure that preserved the view of the sea. Because of the difficult
economic climate of the 1970s, the Monte Carlo project was never built.
Archigram’s significant collective activities ended in 1972, although its members
remained active as designers, teachers, and archivists of their own history. Archigram
remained influential: a sequence of exhibitions and publications has celebrated their
work, and their anti-architecture stance figures in any history of 20th-century
architecture. Their legacy proves difficult to quantify not only because the members
contributed to a diffuse international discourse about architecture but also because their
projects seem to presage innumerable contemporary trends, including both high-tech and
sustainable approaches to design. More concrete influence can be seen in the work of
Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, and Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’s Pompidou
Centre (1976) in Paris. Archigram’s medium has proven as powerful as its message. Its
members’ combination of intricate draftsmanship and collaged elements—including
comic books, advertising imagery, and Day-Glo colors—produced a vivid visual record
that typifies the decade of pop art, Marshall McLuhan, the Beatles’ Yellow Subma rine, and Rowan and
Martin’s Laugh-In. Similarly, both their anti-authoritarian stance and their focus on the individual
reflect the social concerns of the 1960s. Nostalgia for the decade, as well as the
continuing aptness of Archigram’s inventive architecture, continues to spur interest in the
group, as evidenced by the 1998–99 retrospective exhibition.
Archigram is both a group of British architects and their architectural periodical,
which gave the group its name. Between 1960 and 1972, Archigram published nine
issues of the periodical, staged exhibitions and conferences, and devised a number of
influential architectural projects. Founded by Peter Cook (1936-), the group consisted of
Cook, David Greene (1937-), Mike Webb (1937-), Warren Chalk (1927–88), Dennis
Crompton (1935-), and Ron Herron (1930–94). Their avantgarde architecture rejected
heroic modernism in favor of expendable, variable, and often mobile combinations of
component units plugged into superstructures. Although Archigram gained worldwide
recognition, their Utopian project owed much to the intense architectural debate
fermented by the massive rebuilding projects of postwar Britain. The group drew on
eclectic sources, including R.Buckminster Fuller, the Independent Group, Reyner
Banham, comic books, science fiction, consumer imagery, and contemporary technology,
such as the Tels tar satellite, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s mobile
launch towers, and the more modest Airstream trailer.
In late 1960, Cook, Greene, and Webb began meeting in an effort to perpetuate the
vibrant intellectual climate that they had experienced at architecture school. Their
publication both augmented their activities, providing a forum for ideas as well as a
publication venue for student work, and gave the group its name. Archigram not only suggested the
immediacy of a telegram or an aerogram (i.e. “archi[tecture]-gram”) and the urgency of
their ideas but also described the broadsheet format of the fledgling publication. The first
issue, published in 1961, featured both Greene’s poetry and a collage composed of
provocative statements that wound around and through images of architectural projects, a
metaphor for the group’s desire to break down traditional barriers between form and
statement. The document proclaimed their response to postwar British architecture: “we
have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image/which is an insult to functionalism”
Entries A–F 101
in favor of organic forms that “flow,” signaling their enduring interest in the inventive
use of architecture to foster communication.
By 1963 the group had coalesced. That year they produced both Archigram 3 and the Living City exhibition,
staged at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London). Archigram 3 celebrated expendability,
claiming that the change in “user-habits” occasioned by expendable items such as food
packaging should prompt a comparable change in “user-habitats,” an argument for
“throwaway architecture” that would mirror the consumerist lifestyle of the late 20th
century. Inspired by William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, Li ving City examined the urban matrix of
which architecture was but one component. The group claimed that “when it is raining in
Oxford Street, the architecture is no more important than the rain, in fact the weather has
probably more to do with the pulsation of the living city at a moment in time” (Living Arts 2 [June
1963]). The installation comprised seven “Gloops,” spaces that defined constituent
elements of the living city, such as Communications, Crowd, and Movement. This “city
stimulator,” a Postmodern pastiche inspired by the Independent Group’s This Is Tomor row exhibition,
installed at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London) in 1956, urged the spectator toward an
awareness of the vitality and the value of city life. Both Archigram 3 and Living City consolidated the group’s
conviction that modernist architecture mistakenly prioritized heroic permanent structures
over the user’s changing needs, thereby failing to respond to contemporary
developments, such as technology, the consumer economy, and modern communications.
With Archigram 4 (1964), the group embarked on a series of celebrated projects that revolved
around the notion of individual capsules that clipped onto or plugged into a structural
framework. These capsules were mobile, expendable, and responsive to human desires,
thereby embodying Archigram’s central concerns. Cook’s Entertainments Tower (1963),
an entertainment center proposed for the Montreal Exposition (1967), consisted of a
concrete tower on which hung facilities (such as an auditorium) that could be removed or
replaced after the exposition. Similarly, his Plug-In City, a series of ideas developed
between 1962 and 1966, proposed expendable capsules plugged into the network
structure by means of integrated cranes. In 1964 Herron proposed Walking City, mobile
megastructures that walked across both sea and land on robotic, spiderlike legs.
Subsequent projects deployed these ideas on a smaller and perhaps more attainable scale.
Webb proposed the Cushicle (1966–67), a personalized enclosure that enabled a human
to carry a complete environment in a backpack that inflated when needed, and the
Suitaloon (1968), a space suit that inflated to serve as a minimal house. These projects
enabled the consumer to construct a personalized environment, free of the strictures of
modernist architecture.
Archigram 4 not only initiated a series of celebrated projects but also brought the group
worldwide attention. Pages were widely reproduced in magazines, providing the model
for other anti-architecture groups, such as the Italian Archizoom group, and group
members were invited to lecture worldwide. In 1966 they organized the International
Dialogues on Experimental Architecture (IDEA), an exhibition and conference in
Folkestone, Kent, England, which attracted notable speakers. In 1967 the Weekend Telegraph
commissioned Archigram to design a house for the year 1990 and received a structure
that could be adjusted to accommodate various daily activities, which was exhibited at
Harrods in London. Archigram was invited to exhibit at both the 1968 Milan Triennale
and Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. In 1970 the group was invited by the Ministre d’Etat of
Monaco to participate in a limited competition for a seaside entertainment center in
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 102
Monte Carlo. True to the group’s anti-heroic stance, their winning project was an
underground structure that preserved the view of the sea. Because of the difficult
economic climate of the 1970s, the Monte Carlo project was never built.
Archigram’s significant collective activities ended in 1972, although its members
remained active as designers, teachers, and archivists of their own history. Archigram
remained influential: a sequence of exhibitions and publications has celebrated their
work, and their anti-architecture stance figures in any history of 20th-century
architecture. Their legacy proves difficult to quantify not only because the members
contributed to a diffuse international discourse about architecture but also because their
projects seem to presage innumerable contemporary trends, including both high-tech and
sustainable approaches to design. More concrete influence can be seen in the work of
Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, and Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’s Pompidou
Centre (1976) in Paris. Archigram’s medium has proven as powerful as its message. Its
members’ combination of intricate draftsmanship and collaged elements—including
comic books, advertising imagery, and Day-Glo colors—produced a vivid visual record
that typifies the decade of pop art, Marshall McLuhan, the Beatles’ Yellow Subma rine, and Rowan and
Martin’s Laugh-In. Similarly, both their anti-authoritarian stance and their focus on the individual
reflect the social concerns of the 1960s. Nostalgia for the decade, as well as the
continuing aptness of Archigram’s inventive architecture, continues to spur interest in the
group, as evidenced by the 1998–99 retrospective exhibition.
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