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II. 4 Relations between the architectural drawing and other tools
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between designing and construction site. At the same time, the architect was rarely recorded in history as the author of an object.
One of the earliest examples of the design idea imaging, close to orthogonal projec-tions, was the plan of tamarisk cultivation fields together with the location of the temple in Deir el-Bahari, near Memphis, dates back to 2,100 BC (Fig. 11) (Porter 1997, 6).
Edward Robbins, citing the research of the architectural historian, Spiro Kostof, proves that the architectural drawing was the basis of the architect’s workshop as early as in Ancient Greece and Rome, submitting two arguments to support this thesis (Robbins 1997, 11). First of all, he doubts as to whether constructing such sophisticated elevations without the possibility of scaling their elements in the drawing was possible. Secondly, the necessity to master the art of drawing was already emphasised in Vitruvius’ famous treatise dating back to the 1st century BC. The drawing was used to achieve dispositio –
‘the disposition in their just and proper places of all the parts of the building, and the pleasing effect of the same’ by means of ichnography – ‘the representation on a plane of the ground-plan of the work, drawn by rule and compasses’, orthography – ‘the elevation of the front’ and scenography – ‘the front and a receding side (…), the lines being drawn to their proper vanishing points’ (Gwilt 1874, 9–10). In addition to the plan and elevation, a convergent perspective (called scenography) appeared in the treatise, the use of which is known, among others, from the Pompeian wall paintings (Fig. 12).
Fig. 12 Sketch of a Pompeian wall painting – the use of a convergent perspective
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The Chinese and Japanese culture was dominated by views similar to axonometric projection, in which parallel lines do not converge, the objects which are further away are represented higher and the dimensions remain unchanged. A similar procedure of placing objects which were far away higher on a piece of paper was used by artists in medieval Europe in the so-called intentional perspective. Medieval architects and painters also appreciated the advantages of a divergent perspective, exposing the side walls while showing the frontal ones. Another important example of the use of architectural drawings in the Middle Ages is the Plan of Saint Gall monastery dating back to around 820 AD drawn on parchment (Fig. 13) or the famous drawings from the medieval sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, which is a manual of a construction workshop.
The material products of human hands were unique and inimitable at the time. Perfect copies did not exist; even the books transcribed by the scribes bore the signs of originality in the sense that it was technically impossible to retain full fidelity to the original.
‘Copying by hand, regardless of the motivations of the artist and his desire to remain
Fig. 13 Plan of Saint Gall monastery
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more or less faithful to the model, is always to some extent a creative act’. (Carpo 2001, 11)
The ‘invention of architectural design’ (Carpo 2011, X) introduced by Leon Battista Alberti in his epoch-making treatise De Re Aedificatoria dating back to the mid-15th century is a symbolic turning point defining a first revolutionary change and the entrance into the second era. This breakthrough consisted in the recording of design ideas in the form of a drawing, which gave rise not only to architectural drawing, but also to design understood as the pre-construction action, completed before its implementation and not directly related to it, contrary to what it was before. Thus, the drawing played a significant role: it contributed to the separation of theory from practice, design from construction, as well as to preserving the status of the architect as of the building’s author, mainly by granting priority to the design project before its implementation.
This breakthrough coincided with the development of rules for drawing a conver-gent perspective, an achievement attributed to Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti; the principles of the convergent perspective were described by Leon Battista Alberti in the treatise titled De Pictura of 1435. The aspects of geometry and propor-tions could be presented from that moment with the depth of perspective. The impor-tance of these innovations was additionally intensified by the invention of printing, which also influenced the change in archi-tecture – the spread of Renaissance ideas.
Printed treatises, textbooks and architectural templates contained mechanically repro-duced illustrations (woodcuts) which, thanks to the compatibility with the original, could be used extensively, in contrast to manually reproduced drawings which could rarely be considered fully reliable. Mario Carpo (Carpo 2011) elaborates on these changes, which rely precisely on the importance of ‘sameness’.
Fig. 14 Illustration to the Gaspar Monge’s treatise – cross-section of a cone
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According to Leon Battista Alberti, the building was a faithful copy of the design. The design itself obtained superiority over its implemented version. As Mario Carpo notices:
according to Alberti ‘the design of a building is the original, and the building is its copy’
(op. cit., 26). The architect, in order to describe his/her idea, adopted a convention of inscribing three-dimensional objects into a drawing which was close to orthogonal projections most commonly used today. Thanks to the orthogonal projections, the architect gained the opportunity to communicate his/her ideas and test the validity of solutions in the comfort of his/her design studio, without any inconvenience related to the physical hardship on the construction site. These epochal changes in the graphic representation are documented by the drawing achievements of Baldassare Peruzzi, Donato Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio da Sangallo, Michelangelo, Andrea Palladio and later Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
Plans, sections, elevations and perspectives, as mentioned earlier, have been in use for a very long time. However, the geometric accuracy of the mapping of a spatial object on a two-dimensional plane was achieved only at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries thanks to the publication of Gaspard Monge, who is considered to be the inventor of descriptive geometry (Fig. 14).
Architectural drawings based on orthogonal projections, until the second half of the 20th century, were made exclusively by hand, with the help of drafting tools (Fig. 15). The possi-bility of copying drawings was limited until the first photocopier was introduced to the market by Xerox in the late 1950s, allowing to freely copy drawings in any number. Mario Carpo points out the analogy of this revolutionary change to the much earlier industrial revolution, which also enabled the production of repeat-able, identical products (op. cit., X).
The breakthrough brought about by the ap-pearance of a photocopier coincided with an-other revolutionary change which marked the
Fig. 15 Illustration from a Norwegian magazine attached to the article about the new drawing board
(1.8 x 1.2 m, height 2.8 m, weight: 220 kg)
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third era – the introduction of computer-aided design. The era of digital recording brought changes and, consequently, the situation of designers slowly began to change. However, the very method of notation, based on the achievements of Gaspard Monge, has not changed – only the act of drawing has been accelerated (Fig. 16). Still, the improvement was so significant that one can call this technical achievement revolutionary.
The changes taking place at present delineate the fourth era, not because of further, even more perfect methods of drawing. The two-dimensional method of presenting the idea on the plane in the form of a drawing is being replaced by modeling of three-dimensional objects, simulating its appearance and operation. The model contains a vari-ety of detailed information: about its shape, function, materials, construction, mutual relations etc. It enables the generation of traditional, two-dimensional drawings, if required.
Fig. 16 The convention of architectural drawing based on orthogonal projections throughout history: a drawing by Villard de Honnecourt (left) and a contemporary drawing of a flat made with the use of CAD software (right)
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Mario Carpo notices how similar is the diversity of forms in times of the advanced craft before the industrial revolution and the changeability of forms resulting from free modeling in the present digital world (ibid.). Carpo suggests the emergence of a new form of craft: digital craftsmanship. This name seems to be adequate to him, given the freedom of individual shaping of various forms. Software programs with an interface that allows manual manipulation of a solid figure or to model an object using parameters enable the production of various forms. The historical change involves the transition from mass production, or mechanical duplication, consisting in creating identical copies, into an algorithmic one, enabling the production of various mass copies thanks to mass custo-mization (op. cit, 99–104). At a closer look at traditional crafts, one can find, of course, many features that differ significantly traditional crafts from digital ones (such as errors committed by a craftsman, sometimes used in a creative manner, or the author’s unique style resulting from a deep understanding of the material); the comparison, though, seems interesting. This topic is discussed in Subchapter V. 2. 2.
Digital technologies have so significantly expanded their scope of application in recent years that they are currently seen not only as design tools. They play an important role in the integration of the architectural development process in such aspects as the object’s functionality, construction, materials selection, etc. They affect transformations in archi-tecture and urban planning that concern not only the organisation of work and construc-tion producconstruc-tion technologies, but also the broad thinking about the design process and shaping its new theory.26