Eleven Exercises in the Art of Architectural Drawing: Slow Food for the Architect's Imagination

224 Pages·2011·8.24 MB·English

by  Marco Frascari

Eleven Exercises in the
Art of Architectural Drawing
This book offers eleven servings of “slow food” for the architectural imagina-
tion as opposed to the tasteless “fast food” that dominates many drawing
tables or digital tablets. The implementation of “fast drawing” has generated
the present graphic obesity and indigestive architecture, thus the eleven slow
exercises presented in the book aim to make the facture of architecture a much
leaner and digestible process.
Organized around eleven exercises, this book does not emphasize speed,
nor incorporate many timesaving tricks typical of drawing books, but rather
proposes a slow, meditative process for construing drawings and for drawing
constructing thoughts. Detailing the critical nature and crucial role of archi-
tectural drawings, this book is a manual which is essentially not a manual; it
is an elucidation of an elegant manner for practising architecture. The book
identifies the inauguration of architectural theory within the craftsmanship of
architectural drawings and emphasises a non-division between the mind and
the hand in the facture of drawings.
Highly illustrated throughout, with the author’s own original draw-
ings, this book is an indispensable reference text and an effective textbook for
students seeking to advance their appreciation of the nature and exercise of
architectural drawings.
Marco Frascari is Professor of Architecture at Carleton University, Canada.
He studied and worked with Carlo Scarpa at IUAV and received his PhD in
Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught for several years
at the University of Pennsylvania, and as Visiting Professor at Columbia and
Harvard. He then became a G. Truman Ward Professor of Architecture at Virginia
Tech and is currently director of the David Azrieli School of Architecture and
Urbanism in Ottawa, Canada.

Eleven Exercises
in the Art of
Architectural Drawing
Slow Food for the
Architect’s Imagination
Marco Frascari
First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2011 Marco Frascari
The right of Marco Frascari to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frascari, Marco.
Eleven exercises in the art of architectural drawing : slow-food for the
architect’s imagination / Marco Frascari.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Architectural drawing—Technique. I. Title.
NA2708.F73 2011
720.28’4—dc22
2010023422
ISBN 0-203-83585-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-77925-8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-77926-5 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-83585-2 (ebk)
This book is dedicated to my wife Paola

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Preface 1
1 Architectural Iconoclasm 13
2 The Cosmopoiesis of Architectural Drawings 21
exercise #1: food colors 23
3 Festina Lente 29
exercise #2: tools 33
4 Drawings as Loci for Thought 35
5 The Pregnancy of Drawings 45
6 Nullo die sine linea 57
exercise #3: improper drawing 60
7 Architectural Consciousness 65
exercise #4: spolia 73
exercise #5: scale figures 84
8 Architectural Brouillons: work intended to be recopied 87
9 Cosmopoiesis and Elegant Drawings 93
exercise #6: the mosaic 107
10 Traces and Architecture 109
exercise #7: hybrids 113
11 Tools for Architectural Thinking 117
12 Disegnare Designare 129
exercise #8: blind drawing 133
13 The Light of Drawing Imagination 141
exercise #9: the single drawing 148
14 Cosmopoiesis and World-Making 151
exercise #10: icons 164
exercise #11: verso-recto 169
Postface 175
Appendix: Scamozzi on tools and drawings 183
Notes and References 191
Index 209
viii Contents
Acknowledgements
My deepest gratitude goes to Francesca Ford, the Architecture Commission-
ing Editor at Routledge, Taylor & Francis Books, for understanding the nature
of this book; her enthusiastic support has made my unusual combination of
images and text a reality in ink and paper.
I must also show my appreciation for Alex Lazarou, this book would not
have existed in its present graphic form without his masterful capability to
compose words and images on a page.
In addition I would like to acknowledge the support of the Canadian
Center for Architecture for a wonderful interlude in Montreal where I had the
opportunity to do research on scale figures during the day and to work on the
manuscript of this book in the evening.
My wife Paola deserves my most felt thankfulness for being my first reader
and my best critic. Her loving support and encouragement are in the end what
made this book possible.
As always, I owe recognition to Rosa Vecchi Contessa Bolza, my grand-
mother and my first teacher of an unusual critical thinking.
Lastly, I offer my sincere thanks to all the people who have contributed to
and worked on these Eleven Exercises and to all of those who supported me in
any respect during the completion of the project.