Online Drawing Board and Physical Architect A3 Drawing Board

June 7, 2006 · Filed Under Architecture Debates · 1 Comment
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Edwin Heathcote has an interesting article titled – Back to the drawing board publish in FT.com on 12th May. Its a debate on the pro of manual drawing and the con of CAD drawings. Very well written.

It’s easy for architects to be seduced by complex facades or the imagery of amorphous containers, shinily reflective undulating space-age surfaces and the idea of breaking free of the box. But it is leading to poor buildings. I recently sat in on a “crit”, part of an architectural student’s education in which the victims present and defend their work to a panel of tutors and external critics. I was astonished at the students’ primitive conceptions of space and form. After seeing their weirdly abstracted spaces I had to advise them to think of a place they had been in and enjoyed, a cafe, a club, a square, a street, a kitchen during a party, and picture what made it successful. They seemed to have no idea how to conceive a space. How could they possibly propose one to be built? I suspect that computers are having a detrimental effect on young architects. No longer able to conceive beyond the screen, they are also unable to sketch, to convey by hand what they are thinking of.

I couldn’t agree more, on the part where its hard to visualize a space in CAD, and not to mention the idea of an ideal space/architecture in today’s student work is the quality of the 3D rendering – the more realistic/shiny it is, the better. End of the day, it doesn’t matter if your 3D is of high quality, realistic or shinny, forget about those nice double volume spaces that you’ve drawn on a napkin during lunch break, forget about those beautiful sketches on butterpaper. Just extrude everything from the plan and give it to your client and make them laugh all the way to the bank. CAD or Manual? It doesn’t matter!