OASE 105 e-book

It is hard to overstate the importance of drawing for architectural practice. Ever since antiquity, architects have relied on drawings to conceptualize ideas, provide instructions for workers and construct their ideas into architecture. This involvement with drawing has always been mediated through different technologies; drawing is technology. The specific practices of drawing have changed over time, however, adapting to changing technologies. In doing so they have altered the production of architecture.

This issue of OASE looks at architectural drawings as dynamic processes that shape architectural thinking. To give insight into the relation between the tools and techniques for drawing, and the resulting architectural production and construction, OASE 105 draws from case studies that range from early sections in antiquity, the experimentation with drawing techniques on medieval construction sites, the automatization of orthographic drawing in the early Renaissance, to the more specific cases of George Aitchison’s elevations, John Ruskin’s drawing lessons, Heinrich Tessenow’s perspectives, El Lissitzky’s axonometric drawings, Lina Bo Bardi’s surrealist tableau’s and Tony Fretton’s CAD drawings.