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Drawings: The Latest Architecture and News

"Post-Digital" Drawing Valorizes the Ordinary and Renders it to Look Like the Past

This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Can’t Be Bothered: The Chic Indifference of Post-Digital Drawing."

In architectural circles, the appellation “post-digital” has come to mean many things to many people. Some have used it as a shorthand descriptor for the trendy style of rendering that has become popular among students and, increasingly, architectural offices. Others have used it to describe a more profound shift in architectural production that is at once inoculated against the novelty of digital technique and attuned to the sheer ubiquity of “the digital” in contemporary life.

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World Architecture Festival Calls for Entries for 2018 Architecture Drawing Prize

In partnership with Make Architects and Sir John Soane’s Museum, the World Architecture Festival (WAF) has announced the call for entries for the second edition of The Architecture Drawing Prize. Launched in 2017, the prize is conceived to celebrate and showcase the significance of drawing as a tool in capturing and communicating architectural ideas.

The Architecture Drawing Prize embraces the creative use of digital tools and digitally-produced renderings, while recognising the enduring importance of hand drawing. The organisers invite entries of all types and forms: from technical or construction drawings to cutaway or perspective views – and anything in between. Drawings may, by varying degrees, be entirely speculative or relate to real projects.

The Importance of the Section in Architectural Representation and Practice

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Architectural comprehension as a field deals with representation as a synthesis of varied efforts —constructive, compositional, spatial, and technical qualities— which are then articulated in the constructed building. For this purpose, it is essential to think about the graphic representation that presupposes all these efforts, since it is both a procedure and a product of architectural design.

These Competition-Winning Drawings Explore the Meaning of Island Utopias

Architectural print studio Desplans in collaboration with Library Illustrazioni have published the results of their architectural drawing competition titled “The Island: Between Utopia and Metaphor for Reality.” The competition asked participants to submit drawings and text interpreting the meaning of islands and utopias, considering “the double value inherent in the utopia” between aspiration and limitation.

The entries were judged by a jury of figures from Library and Desplans, with one winner and 12 honorable mentions selected. The winning entries were chosen with attention given to the relevance of the theme, dialogue between text and image, graphic research, and quality of reflection.

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Kenneth Frampton Awarded Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at 2018 Venice Biennale

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Kenneth Frampton. Image Courtesy of The Venice Biennale

British architect, historian, critic and educator Kenneth Frampton has been announced as this year’s recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2018 Venice Biennale. The decision was made by the Board of The Venice Biennale chaired by Paolo Baratta, upon recommendation from the Biennale’s curators, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects.

Having studied at the Architectural Association in London, Frampton has taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York since 1972. He has also lectured at several leading institutions, including ETH Zurich, the Royal College of Art in London, and the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam. Perhaps his most influential work, “Modern Architecture: A Critical History,” was described by Biennale President Paulo Baratta as a book which “no student of the faculties of architecture is unfamiliar with.”

Foster + Partners Reveal "Sanctuary" Chapel for Vatican Pavilion at Venice Biennale

Foster + Partners has released details of their proposed chapel to form part of the Vatican’s inaugural entry to the Venice Biennale. The Holy See Pavilion will comprise ten chapels designed by ten architects, to be situated on the Venetian Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Among the architects contributing to the circuit of chapels are Foster + Partners, Eduardo Souto de Mourao, and Francesco Cellini.

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B.V. Doshi's Drawings Reveal the Identity of His Work

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Concept Drawing for Vidhyadhar Nagar Masterplan . Image Courtesy of Pritzker Architecture Prize

Balkrishna Doshi, also known as B.V. Doshi or simply Doshi, has been named this year’s Pritzker Prize Laureate. His extensive portfolio of educational, cultural, public administration, and residential projects is matched only by his contribution to architectural culture—from founding The School of Architecture at Ahmedabad (now known as the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology) to co-authoring the Habitat Bill of Rights, among others. Yet, his vividly illustrated conceptual drawings reveal as much, if not more, of the architect’s relationship with building, history, tradition, culture, and modernism.

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UAE Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale to Explore Human-scale Landscapes and Social Spaces

As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage we present the proposal for the UAE Pavilion. Below, the participants describe their contribution in their own words.

The National Pavilion UAE will present “Lifescapes Beyond Bigness,” an exhibition exploring human-scale architectural landscapes, at the 2018 Venice Biennale. The exhibition aims to highlight the role of architecture and urban design in forming the choreography of people’s daily routines. It particularly investigates the role of ‘quotidian’ (every day) landscapes in accommodating, enhancing, and facilitating social activities across different places in the UAE.

Structural Design of Zaha Hadid's 1000 Museum Revealed in CAD Drawings

As Zaha Hadid Architects’ 1000 Museum residential tower in Miami continues toward its December 2018 completion date (tracked by this nifty countdown clock), the computer drawings for the structure have been revealed, showing the complex structure in section, elevation and detail.

Construction of the 62-story skyscraper is getting close to topping out as it rises past its neighbors on Biscayne Bay.

Check out the drawings below as well as the latest interior and exterior renderings in the gallery at the bottom of the page.

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Stellar Drawings Selected as Winners of WAF's Inaugural Architecture Drawing Prize

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Hybrid: WINNER - Memento Mori A Peckham Hospice Care Home by Jerome, Xin Hao Ng. Image Courtesy of World Architecture Festival

The World Architecture Festival, with co-curators Make Architects and the Sir John Soane’s Museum, has announced the winner of the their inaugural Architecture Drawing Prize, established to recognize the “continuing importance of hand drawing, whilst also embracing the creative use of digitally produced renderings.”

From 166 entries from architects, designers and students across the globe, 38 of the best drawings were shortlisted within three categories: Digital, Hand-drawn, and Hybrid. From that list, commendations and a category winner were chosen, with the overall grand prize awarded to the year’s best drawing. Submissions were evaluated on technical skill, originality in approach and ability to convey an architectural idea, whether for a conceptual or actual building project.

This year, the overall winner was Momento Mori: a Peckham Hospice Care Home by Jerome Xin Hao Ng, produced as part of Ng’s final diploma project at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

“[The drawing is] a superbly conceived and executed perspectival view looking down through the building from roof level, praised for its technical skill and the sensitivity with which it depicted the spaces found in such institutions as settings for multi-generation social interaction,” said Jeremy Melvin, Curator of World Architecture Festival (WAF).

The 2017 World Architecture Festival will take place in Berlin from November 15-17. Learn more about the Festival and purchase delegate passes here. Use the discount code ARCHDAILY17 to receive 20% off. An incredible list of speakers including Alison Brooks, Charles Jencks, Pierre de Meuron and Francis Kéré will feature across 3 days from November 15th to 17th at the Arena Berlin, Germany. Conferences, city tours, lectures and critiques of the shortlisted projects from the 2017 WAF awards are among the events scheduled for the festival.

See the winners and shortlisted drawings below.

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30 Graphs and Charts to Boost Your Visual Presentations

Communicating ideas through imagery are central to the design process. In client presentations, site visits, or public exhibitions, we are required to represent important aspects clearly to the receiver, who is often not an architect. Furthermore, producing detailed architectural drawings can allow us to identify and modify certain aspects of the design. 

Diagrams and charts, because of their non-spatial characteristics, are often neglected until the last moments of the design process, however, they can be a useful tool for analysis and organization. Taking the time to think and articulate these elements yield positive results, from understanding and organizing a design process to providing an unexpected change of idea.

In an effort to enhance the graphics and diagrams in architectural representation, check out this series of case studies to help you boost the visual, analytical, organizational power of your work.

A Selection of Impressive Perspective Sections

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The perspective section is an increasingly popular form of architectural representation, one that is most commonly used in architectural competitions since it allows a technical drawing to be mixed with an image, a section which allows one to easily express the qualities of the space designed in a two-dimensional drawing. Below, we have put together a selection of impressive perspective sections ranging from a realistic aesthetic to a line drawing by hand.

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This Project Explores the Ottoman Miniature as a Form of Architectural Representation

Over the following weeks we will be sharing a selection of unrealized student projects, alongside realized schemes by practices who explore representational techniques, in collaboration with KooZA/rch. The aim is "to explore the role of the architectural drawing as a tool for communication" and, in the process, provoke a conversation about the contemporary use, format, and role of drawing.

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Bring New York's Never-Built Projects to Life With This Kickstarter

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The “Never Built” world so far includes Never Built Los Angeles, a book and exhibit, and the book, Never Built New York. Now, the Queens Museum hopes to continue the exploration into the New York that might have been with a Never Built New York exhibition and has launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $35,000 to make it happen. The exhibition, curated by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin and designed by Christian Wassmann, will explore 200 years of wild schemes and unbuilt projects that had the potential to vastly alter the New York we know today.

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The Website Behind the "Post-Digital" Drawing Revolution

This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Inside The Digital Platform Championing Post-Digital Drawing."

Digital technologies were supposed to kill the drawing. And in an obvious way they did, with CAD displacing hand draughtsmanship long ago. But drawing is more than mere delineation—measured construction drawings—or even the rendering, which has devolved into a mere marketing tool. Indeed, as Sam Jacob writes, it constitutes a fundamental “architectural act” that lies at the core of the discipline’s self-understanding.

Jacob describes a new “post-digital” mode of drawing that incorporates narrative cues, art historical allusions, and software-enabled collage techniques. It recalls Mies’s sparse one-point perspectives and de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings as well as the affected irreverence of Postmodernism. It’s a style popularized by blogs such as KoozA/rch, which was founded by architect Federica Sofia Zambeletti three years ago. We spoke to Zambeletti about the resurgence of architectural drawing and how the style could soon exhaust itself.

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"后数字制图"会是手绘和电脑博弈的下一个阶段吗?

目前在纽约市的现代艺术博物馆(MoMA)展出的是建筑师扎哈哈迪德(Zaha Hadid)为她的开创性未建成项目香港太平山(The Peak in Hong Kong)所做的概念画作。本作品作于1991年,正处于3D CAD软件的普及为建筑制图的革命注入了一剂强心针的时期边缘。太平山(The Peak)画作出现于建筑制图因其自身原因的革新的末期,和旨在展示现实世界的可缩放,滚动,渲染时代的来临。只有这种新的图像创作软件在绘图功能上与以前的时代具有很大不同并且开创了新的制图风格,工具和过程通过对用户与他们的互动施加预定的议程来对设计进行约束。

在这个数字时代,像勒布贝斯·伍兹(Lebbeus Woods)和迈克尔·格雷夫斯(Michael Graves)这样的以手绘艺术而闻名的建筑师,推翻了建筑制图中占据主导地位的超级现实主义。 然而,根据 Sam Jacob 在“Metropolis”杂志上发布的最新文章,我们可能正在进入以“后数字”(post-digital)所代表的时代。 在后数字时期,建筑师重回传统制图时代,但是是通过创造新的方法论和重新评估过去数十年来最适合的数字工具。目前在建筑实践中还是大大倾向于拼贴技术,但是对于后数字制图的研究仍旧会在事务所和高等学府中继续。

This Instagram Account Explores the Beauty of Circular Plans in Architecture

“The circle . . . is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. [It] combines the concentric and the excentric in a single form, and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms [triangle, square, circle], it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.”

This quote, spoken by artist and Bauhaus professor Wassily Kandinsky, helps to explain the obsession architects, from Palladians to Modernists, have long held with pure geometrical forms – chief among them the circle.

Inspired by this obsession, one Instagram account titled “Circular Spaces” has collected many of the best examples of circles found in architecture. The account tracks the geometries at all scales, from the planet-sized plan of the Death Star to the familiar intimacy of a round dining table. Check out a selection from “Circular Spaces” below.

20 Beautiful Axonometric Drawings of Iconic Buildings

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Architect and illustrator Diego Inzunza has created a new series titled "Architectural Classics," which presents and analyzes 20 iconic architectural works from the 20th-century. Using a graphic technique based upon axonometric views, the style allows each building to be seen from multiple sides, creating a comprehensive overall interpretation of the architecture.