The Right Drawing for the Right Building

I've done a lot of drawing so far, much more frequently than I've done at school as I tend to lean more heavily on computer modeling and trace paper. As I visit more buildings and draw them, I tend to classify the buildings based on their dates of construction. Subsequently, the drawings I make get grouped in with those time periods. As I look back through my sketchbook after my midsemester evaluation today, I've noticed that certain types of buildings, built in certain time periods, lend themselves to a particular manner of drawing.

Medieval churches lend themselves to isometric drawing due to their regular and predictable arch structure. I draw the reflected ceiling plan first to describe the geometry of the ceiling, then shift the drawing about forty degrees clockwise and construct the arches three-dimensionally from their corresponding positions in plan. The drawing below is a detail of the main nave arch and the smaller side arches, done at Lund Cathedral in Sweden.

Neoclassical buildings, especially those built in the nineteenth century, lend themselves nicely to sections. The perfect symmetry makes it easy to find a good place to cut through, to record the most interesting and telling information. Cutting a section through the wall of a neoclassical building will also reveal the intricate molding and ornament on the walls, both interior and exterior, and convey their depth in a way that an elevation can't do. The example below is of the main building of the University of Lund. The section is taken just through the lobby, but shows some of the elaborate detailing on the facade (to the right) and captures the proportions which are so important to neoclassical architecture. The cut is taken through the double-height space to convey the grandeur of the balcony and skylight above.

And then, we approach contemporary architecture. It's difficult to apply a blanket judgment as to the most appropriate way to represent contemporary buildings, but generally a three-dimensional drawing is most informative. The drawing below is a semi-constructed isometric of an interior detail of Libeskind's Danish Jewish Museum. The wood panel interior meets the brick of the existing building in this no-longer-functioning doorway. It's impossible to represent in plan or section, and I don't know where I would make the cut. I drew on paper what I wouldn't actually be able to see in real life, to better understand three-dimensionally how the new interacts with the old.

Or take Calatrava's Twisting Torso in Malmö, Sweden, which took a bit of plan, but a lot of isometric, to draw understandably.

The examples above lead to a conversation I'd like to continue to explore about how the drawing can act as the building's representative. The selection of the appropriate drawing method is as important as the quality of the drawing itself. As one who draws, I must also make choices about what information to include or exclude, before even thinking about how to convey it accurately. We're seeing enough variety of buildings now that we're in Denmark for me to practice multiple modes a drawing, so you'll be seeing more variety in the future.