W1 ABC of Architecture - James F.

O’Gorman

- Supports Vitruvius efforts: Virtuis gave us the ABC of architecture - remains a useful
framework for the preliminary analysis of a building
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- Three basic types of architectural drawings
- The plan diagrams function
- The section (in part) diagrams structure
- The elevations evokes beauty
- Plan = client needs, section = tells builder what structure to use, elevation = architect’s
design
- To understand a work of architecture is to recognize this mutuality of vitruvian triangle
(all development upon each other)
- The work of architecture is the result of the architect’s interpretation of the programme
in relation to the client’s budget, the building site, and the availability of materials
and structural technology.
- Next, must look at the plan as a diagram of the building’s intended use, its function
- The building program - the statement of function
- Plan: demonstrates the relationships between the items of the programme that
have spatial equivalents
- Primary spaces: the main function of the building
- Secondary spaces make those primary spaces usable (corridors, restrooms)
- Additive plan: strings discrete rooms into an irregular pattern, often
asymmetrical
- Divisive plan: separates species within a larger and simple perimeter, often
symmetrical
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- The arcuated:(*#'3#.&0(#5(4&02&B
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- Suspension structures (golden gate
bridge)
- Tension pulls, compression pushes - balancing forces
- General rule: painting represents space; sculpture displaces space; and architecture
encloses space, usable space
- Architects creates beauty through formal design
- Picturesque building is asymmetrical, dynamic, colourful, visually energetic
 - Doors and windows often irregular shapes and distribution; the skyline breaks
into spires, towers, dormers, high roofs
- Formal building is symmetrical, quiet, monochromatic, decorous
- Axial alignment dominates the formal
- Openings of repetitive design occur evenly spaced, main doors are centred, a
horizontal cornice or simple roof caps the building
- Choice of materials is an important consideration in determining colour, scale, weight
- Brick, stone, stucco, enamelled metal panels, plate glass: each imparts its own effect
upon the finished building.
- Distribution of windows on the exterior is notable
- Colour/light play important roles in the characterisation of interior space/exterior form
- Architectural beauty, is the hoped-for result of appropriate planning and sturdy structure
- Architecture and history go hand in hand: The Vitruvian factors remain dependent on
each other, but they change individually over time.
- Building types, and hence building programs, vary from era to era
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- Renaissance: wanted churches and palaces
- 19th century: railroad station or public library
- 20th century: air terminal
- E,*+&,-($1+%0+,2.(6&/>=(/,0(.#%+0() Industrial revolution; production of lighter and
stronger synthetic materials (iron, steek, plate glass, reinforced concrete)
- Standards of beauty, or style, change over time
- Buildings have always reflected the society that ordered them, the technology available
to build them, and the prevailing artistic theory that gave them shape
- Architecture is a language.of metaphor. Classical orders; modelled on the human body;
the sturdy Doric a young man, the more delicate Ionic a young woman
- You must learn to read architecture by reading history
- The pointed arches of the Gothic suggest a Christian church; the dome of the
U.S. Capitol communicates political power
- The analysis of a building studies plan, structure, and style in relation to historical period.

- Architecture started from wanting shelter

- Before everything else, buildings should keep us warm
- The yurt and cave are architectural forms
- Architecture is an art that behind by creating habitable interiors
- Shares certain characteristics with other concrete art forms, especially painting and
sculpture: abstract principles such as design, composition, form, light, colour pattern
- Element of space sets architecture apart from other arts
- Primarily concerned with creating usable interior space, first of all utilitarian
- Architectural art begins physical and ends psychological

- A Roman republican architect and engineer, Marcus Vitruvius; Bible of building

- "with due reference to function, structure, and beauty"
- Utilitas: building programme created by the client
- Firmitas: the structural and material means of answering the requirements of that
programme
- Venustas: design or artists arrangements of those
systems/materials, responsibility of the architect
- Client, Builder, and Architect represent
respectively Utilitas, Firmitas, and Venustas
- need/use; floorplans
- Overall structure; sections
- Overall design; elevations

Plans are horizontal

slices through the
building at each floor
showing the lateral
arrangement of rooms.

Sections are vertical slices showing upright spatial

relationships

Elevations are drawings of interior/exterior walls undistorted

by the effects of perspective.

Structure, the mechanical systems

- Multiple sheets of architectural drawings are the rule now in the creation of a building
- Architecture is a discipline located at the intersection of social, technological, and
artistic history
- A building exists as a crystallisation of a given moment of society, technology, and art.
- Architecture is history
- Architecture stands at the intersection of societal need, available technology, and
artistic theory
- Architecture is, or at least it begins with, the enclosure of habitable space.
W1 Architecture since 1400, Introduction - James-Chakraborty

- History of style: formal characteristics of a building that enabled it to be identified with a

particular time, and place
- Forms, materials, and technologies used
- Baked brick and tile revetment, large iwans, and muqarnas decoration identify the
Gur-i-Mir as an Islamic building; expansive windows, exposed reinforced concrete,
and bare surfaces demonstrate that the Glass House exemplifies the International Style
from the middle of the twentieth century
- Style can explain what those who designed and commissioned a building intended to
communicate
- Timurid architecture in central Asia and modern architecture in Latin America can both
be presumed to reflect significant aspects of the cultures that erected them
- The Gur-i-Mir: illustrates the ambitions of individual mediaeval rulers at a time when
political units were defined more by the extent of territory a ruler could conquer and
control than by a strong sense of national identity
- Its impressive scale correlates with the ambitions and achievements of Timur
- Stand for buildings erected from the seventh through the eighteenth centuries in
territories governed by Muslims
- Modern glass house: serves as an example of the search for individual expression,
especially since the beginning of the nineteenth century, by members of the educated
upper-middle classes, often in opposition to such autocratic rule.
- Primarily a testament to the advanced taste of the Bardis
- Way station between, for instance, art nouveau and postmodernism within a
progression of styles
- Might be compared with similar buildings in France and the United States as an
example of a homogenising globalisation - remnants of rain forest - or brazilian
modernism

- Analyses of style have included discussions of how structure shapes space

- Space structures experience at the multiple levels of buildings, cities, landscapes
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- Differences in courtyards of the Gur-i-Mir and the Glass house can be explained in
relation to both style and purpose
- Forecourt at the Gur-i-Mir emphasises the importance of the tomb and room
above it by creating a space that buffers them from the main road
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heightens the effect of a transparent tree house by minimising the distance from
the surrounding flora and fauna

- Immense difference in form and purpose; but have things in common

- Enabled the clients to make statements about their identities and about their
relationships to the places in which the buildings were located.
- Purpose of this book: to reconstruct the story of how environments are created that
shape experience and communicate identity through the ways in which spaces are
formed and surfaces are decorated
- Basic premise: many builders and architects, as well as their clients, have used either
the history of local architecture or an awareness of past and present architecture
elsewhere, and often both, to create novel structures that shaped the ways in which they
and their societies were perceived.

- 1400 because: the clearly antiquarian character of architecture in many different parts of
the world and the extent of contact and interaction between geographically disparate
cultures quickened at about that time
- scale of the distances across which architectural ideas travelled with increasing speed

- “Timurid architecture can stand for Islamic architecture as a whole not because Muslims
from Morocco to Bangladesh shared a single approach to architecture—monumental
tombs, for instance, remained almost unknown out- side central and South Asia—but
because Timur compelled skilled artisans from the vast range of territory he either raided
or controlled to come to Samarqand, where their combined talents produced new
syntheses of previously diverse local forms and motifs. Bo Bardi, who emigrated from
Italy to Brazil after World War II, was well aware of contemporary architecture in Europe
and North America, as well as enthusiastic about her new home.”

- Importance of recognizing the large number of people who share responsibility for the
creation and maintenance of buildings
- A wider range of clients and construction workers, not to mention generations of
users, should properly share credit for building and maintaining the structures
that surround us
- Glass house - modern because involvement of woman, Timur’s daughter in law’s
activities in the building as an an important architectural patron

- Architecture gives substance to the ambitions of those individuals and groups with
enough wealth and clout to build.
- Rather than merely reflecting culture, architecture contributes to crafting it
- Timur’s tomb speaks of his political power and personal taste; the visitor
transfixed by the elegance of its decoration momentarily loses consciousness of
the brutality of many of his military campaigns
- Glass House Bo Bardi presented her husband with the perfect stage set from
which to rehabilitate himself as a major figure in the postwar art world
- Persuasive, rhetorical power of buildings, which can fade or change over time
- “More than simply sheltering the living and the dead from sun and rain, wind and cold,
the Gur-i-Mir and the Glass House are examples of the ways in which buildings, humble
as well as monumental, convey the force of personality, the wonder of technology, and
the daunting power of imagination.”
W1 Space and Function, Chapter 4 - Conway Roenisch

- Concentrating on the facade = superficial understanding of buildings, particularly if the

focus is on one’s personal reaction to its form and decoration
- Build for shelter and protection against weather and noise, security against theft,
damage or fire; and privacy
- Different activities, different buildings with varying spaces, environments, and forms
- The functions of buildings are often complex, and not all are utilitarian
- Many buildings are designed to express emotion or symbolise ideas - may influence final
form
- Some religious buildings embody something of the spirit of the religion
- Often the forms of buildings are a mix of prac- tical, expressive and symbolic functions
Enclosing Space
- Most buildings shelter and contain activities and objects in spaces enclosed by floors,
walls, ceilings or roofs
- Transitional space; neither inside nor outside but flows within the two (verandah, a
covered terrace or an open area under the building)
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circulate under the building, provide a sheltered place for children to play in bad weather,
and offer views through and past the building.
- Looks like it's floating, lighter
- Shelter in the form of a huge umbrella is how we might describe a railway station train
shed
- Protect passengers from rain
- Served to disperse the smoke from the steam trains in the era before electric and
diesel engines
- Walls define or subdivide space and affect the way we experience it
- Transparent glass walls of iron and glass buildings do not visually define the barrier
between inside and out sharply
- From the outside we can see what goes on inside and vice versa
- Dark glass acts like a mirror
- On a sunny day the form of the building becomes ambiguous because of the
reflections of the adjacent townscape
- At night when the lights are on inside, the walls dissolve completely and the
interior is revealed
- “German Pavilion was designed by Mies van der Rohe for the international exhibition in
Barcelona in 1929 to be part of space rather than enclose it (see Figure 3.10). The roof
defines the space below it, but the glass walls do not always meet at the corners to
subdivide the space fully. Instead, there are gaps that allow people to move around the
freestanding walls. The walls of glass direct the flow of visitors through the building and
their transparency denies any sense of enclosure, giving a feeling of space and light
throughout.”

- Traditional Japanese domestic architecture: spaces are subdivided by translucent paper

screens and movable partitions, some not even reaching the ceiling, so there is little
sense of enclosure
- The way buildings define and enclose space, and how the experience of space relates to
the materials used
Space and Function
- Buildings consist of several juxtaposed spaces catering for different activities
- Night clubs; large open space for dancing, sufficient room for the band and a bar, maybe
tables and chairs, balcony, cloakrooms, toilets, entrance hall
- Spaces for a particular function will depend on the period, the culture and the
geographical context, as well as social and political attitudes, status, finances and
the desire to be expressive.
- All may change over time
- Fortified walls for protection often surrounded mediaeval towns
- As the population grew, it became common to build upwards. Stone tenements of up to
ten storeys were constructed, with one or more families living on each storey
Space and Gender
- Male architects (who may not necessarily have been concerned with the needs of
women) have designed most buildings in western cultures
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- The 1930s’ middle-class home was designed for a full-time housewife and perhaps
domestic staff
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3"+>/-&(.3/*&(#5(6&"(#4,
- 1813, Robert Owen: published plans for alternative communities that catered for the
needs of working mothers
- Kitchens and dining rooms were part of the communal facilities shared by the
whole community
The size of spaces
- Factors that influence size: finances, available materials, the costs involved in heating or
cooling large or small spaces and the significance of the space
- Scale term used to discuss size of the space relative to the size of something else
- A space’s scale depends on the number of people using it, the furnishings and objects in
it, the neighbouring spaces and our expectations
- Juxtaposition of different-sized spaces may be deliberately exaggerated to give a sense
of drama or to impress the visitor
- Spatial hierarchy: The priority given to some spaces over others within a building
- Andrea Palladio related the hierarchy of space to the human body
- Principal living/entertaining rooms were beautiful, should be exposed; others
such as kitchens/cellars were not suitable for view, should be hidden
- Stage and the auditorium are the largest spaces within the hierarchy of space in a
theatre
- The high auditorium is designed to be airy, give good acoustics and to provide
audiences with adequate sight lines
 Proportion
- The dimensions of a building and its parts may be carefully related to create pleasing
proportions
- Muslim religious buildings have used mathematical calculations
- Japan: the size of the tatami mat became the common module for calculating the
dimension of rooms in traditional houses
- Buddhist, Jain and Hindu temples: measurements were based on modules derived from
the dimensions of the sanctuary or of the image of the presiding deity in the shrine as set
out in the shastras or traditional treatises on architecture
- Greek temples using the Doric order
- The column height was one third of the width of the stylobate
- Later, the width of the spaces between columns became important in determining
dimensions
- Rules of proportion evolved
- Greek temples of the fifth century BC showed further divergence from strict proportions,
regularity, straight lines and right angles
- Columns were narrowed at the top and modified to achieve entasis
- Columns and walls were inclined
- Column spacing was reduced at the corners or varied within the colonnade
- Stylobate was curved down at the edges
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- Vitruvius argued that proportion and symmetry were manifest in the human body
- He used a module based on the length of a man’s foot, which is one-sixth of a man’s
height
- This module determined the diameter of the base of a column, and multiples of it
gave its height and the other dimensions of a temple
- Ionic and Corinthian columns were more slender and reflected the proportions of
the female body
- During the renaissance architects were inspired by antique sources and by the beauty
and harmony of the universe
- Leon Battista Alberti, linked ‘harmonic ratios’ to dimensions in architecture
- Andrea Palladio; three different sets of ratios; Arithmetic, Geometric and Harmonic
proportions and determined the relationship between the height of rooms, their width and
length and the relative sizes of different rooms
- Renaissance; Golden Section = division of a straight line into two parts so that the
relationship of the smaller part to the larger equals that of the larger part to the whole
- Fibonacci series

Shape of spaces
- Western urban buildings - predominantly rectangular
- Other cultures, non-rectangular forms predominate
- The shapes of religious buildings commonly have symbolic significance
- Renaissance architects used geometry to obtain ideal shapes for buildings
- Alberti preferred circular, centrally planned churches not for practical reasons but
because he saw the circle as an absolute and perfect shape, common in nature and an
appropriate expression of the divine
- Space needs to be understood in three dimensions; to the front, sides and reas, and
from above
- Baroque and rococo interiors of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
were designed to captivate the onlooker and draw them into a world of illusion through
painting, sculpture and the curving forms of architecture
- Architects of the art nouveau style wanted to create a new style not based on past
forms, so they explored natural forms and new materials (iron, glass, concrete) to
create curved and irregular spaces
- Expressionists also created unusual shaped interiors
- The rationale for the choice of spatial configurations varies
Relationship between internal spaces
- The relationship between spaces and the building as a whole depends on many factors
- Concern with external symmetry, how the façade reflects the function of the
spaces and how rooms relate internally
- Today, we think a kitchen is best located near the dining area so that food arrives warm
on the table.
- Some large institutions such as hospitals inevitably have kitchens far from the
point of consumption because it is not possible to bring patients to one large
dining area.
- Classical architects; start with cube and then separate
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Communication spaces
- Access from one room to another is by additional spaces or communication areas
- Corridors, passageways, halls )(3"#>+0&(0+"&*-(/**&..(/,0('/:&(+-(1,,&*&../"=(-#(2#(
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- Stairs or lifts, when more than one floor
- Careful planning is required to make circulation routes short and direct
- buildings open to the public; architects need to ensure accessibility for all levels of
mobility and vision
- Victornian houses route through the house related to aesthetics, practically and
propriety
- Corridors and stairs were either grand and very evident, to guide and impress
guests, or hidden away and narrow, for servants to use
- For some architects, route through the building becomes an important part and largely
controls the overall layout
- Le Corbusier’s villas; Ramps and circular stairways to achieve the promenade
architecturale; designed to provide a varied walk of changing visual experiences within
the building
- Architects’ plans are extremely valuable in helping us to understand the relative size,
allocation and relationship between spaces in buildings and the communication routes.
The interior environment
- Buildings are also about creating a comfortable and safe environment for working, living
or housing objects.
- Temperature, light, transmission of noise; need to be controlled
- Warning of fire and facilities for hygiene
- Building with many floors; will need lifts/escalators
- Space must be found to house these services and the pipes and wires necessary for the
building to function.
- The materials, the design of the fabric of the building, the size of interior spaces, the
nature and frequency of openings, means used to heat, ventilate and control the
temperature, all contribute to the quality of the interior environment.
- One of the most important: adequate light
- The quantity of natural light used in buildings depends on the geographical
location, the climate, the building materials, the constructional system, the design
and the use of the internal spaces
- Load-bearing walls tend to have relatively small windows
- The development of metal and reinforced concrete frame buildings offered the
opportunity for complete walls of glass, but with them came the side effects of heat loss
and gain affecting the internal environment.
- The frame structure with its skin of glass poses many problems for the interior
environment
- 20th century modernists rejected load-bearing walls
- Walls of glass reduce the need to provide artificial light in buildings during the day
- weighed against the effects of overheating in the summer sunshine (greenhouse
effect), temperature drop in the winter
- Le Corbusier; thick grille of concrete called a brise-soleil
- Other methods: use of double and triple glazing to keep out the heat and cold,
reflective coatings (which allow light but not heat to enter)
- Buildings often subdivided to prevent spread of fire
- Escape routes provided
- Fire-resistant materials for walls, floors, doors give people more time to evacuate
Active environmental control
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- Boilers generated hot water or steam that was carried by pipes and radiators throughout
the building
- To create a comfortable environment in hot climates fans and shutters were used
- Air Conditioning; widely available in industrial and commercial buildings in 20th century
- Sealed interiors with air conditioning and central heating need very careful
design, otherwise they may lead to sick building syndrome and encourage
Legionnaire’s disease and allergic reactions
Passive environmental control
- Environmentally conscious architects seek passive means to control the interior
environment in order to reduce energy consumption and global warming
- Massive stone or brick load-bearing walls offer good thermal insulation, and many small
windows, roof lights and light wells provide as much natural light as possible.
- Wind towers were also used to cool buildings in hot dry climates.
 - A tower on the roof catches the cooler,less dusty air above the building, which is
channelled down to the rooms below
- Today, environmentally conscious architects are re-exploring natural ventilation using a
variety of techniques
- thermo-syphonic stack effect created by openings in towers or ‘chimneys’ and locating
windows on opposite sides of rooms to encourage cross-ventilation
Space for servicing technology
- Essential services such as heating, air conditioning, lighting, lifts and waterborne
sewage systems require machinery, boilers and tanks, pipes and wires
- Which need to be appropriately housed somewhere within the building
- Was often bulky and took up a lot of space
- London, New York, Chicago; Needed to make as much rentable space as possible
- The visual impact of such services could be minimised by hiding much of it in the
basement or the attic, within the walls or under the floors and designing the central
heating radiators and pipes for minimal intrusion
- Traditional fireplace symbolised the heart of the home; fireplaces further welcomed
occupants to sit in the draught-free warm space around the fire
- Chimneys were a necessary and prominent feature on many traditional buildings
- For maintenance and hygiene reasons, sanitary waste pipes usually run down the
external walls of buildings in the UK
- 18th century; such pipes were wooden and internally located (with frequent disastrous
consequences)
- In hot climates; water tanks are often placed on or under the roof
- Colder climates; danger of freezing
- More recently, architects have shown that placing servicing equipment on the exterior
can be both visually exciting and leave more space for commercial use
- Lloyds Building in London; toilet and washroom ‘pods’, water tanks, glass lifts and piping
are on the exterior, leaving more available office space
- In modern offices; deep spaces between the ceilings and floors needed to house cable,
ducts and pipes carrying electricity, air and water, air conditioning, fire detectors, and
fire-fighting sprinklers at each workstation
- creation of artificial environments is a complex task
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W2 Architecture since 1400, Chapter 3 - James-Chakraborty

- 1418, Florence: architectural competition

- Building the impossible dome, city’s cathedral: Santa Maria del Fiore
- Government directed the construction and paid
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*+-+&.
- Built expression of this shift: took the form of splendid new cathedrals
- Beginning of 11th century: cities on the Italian peninsula and north of the alps began
erecting large and elaborate urban churches for their bishops
 - Often placed on sites of earlier/more modest buildings (which sat on remains of
roman temples)
- Debates about motivation of building these churches; by religious piety? Or civic pride?
- Florence cathedral’s construction started in 1296
- Nave using gothic elements (pointed arches and rib vaulting)
- Big domes uncommon in mediaeval europe
- 15th century Florentines associated them with a distinguished past
- Pantheon in Rome to be a typical ancient temple
- In a city increasingly fascinated by antiquity, a domed cathedral offered a means of
creating a distinctively Italian alternative, grounded in hallowed tradition, to
contemporary northern European (and particularly French) fashion.
- G"/,0(.3/,(#5(H/2+/(J#36+/(+,(-6&(R=A/,-+,&(*/3+-/%(#5(S#,.-/,-+,#3%&()('/=(6/>&(
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- 1418; world’s most impressive new dome - Gur-i-Mir
- Florence fascinated by ancient rome
- Ancient Rome and (more recent) Romanesque offered a means to declare
artistic independence from France, where the Gothic had originated in the mid-
twelfth century, and from central Europe, where it was currently being employed
with great imagination and originality
- To solve dome’s construction = florentines organised a competition
- Initial results inconclusive
- Agreed to adopt proposal by Filippo Brunelleschi
- less surprising in Florence than it would have been in northern Europe, where
master builders supervised the construction of great cathedrals
- First “architect” - focuses both on the appearance and structure of buildings
without contributing their own labour to their construction
- Wooden model
- 18th century, architecture became completely distinct from painting, sculpture, and
engineering
- The hallmarks of Italian Renaissance architecture were already visible in Brunelleschi’s
dome
- increasing importance of theory over pure craft, the recovery of ancient Roman
motifs and construction technology, and the use of these forms and construction
techniques to invent new solutions to techno- logical and artistic problems
- Brunelleschi solved by using a double shell; a light outer shell encased a thick inner shell
- Developed a number of machines to assist construction
- Hoist (1420-21); carried building materials up to the scaffolding
- Domes marked the importance of major civic buildings (18th)
- In his later architecture, emphasised the orderly articulation of wall plane, plan, and
eventually, space
- 1420; change in the way in which space was conceptualised and elevations were
organised
- Brunelleschi’s rediscovery of single-point perspective (which had been ignored
in european art for a millennium)
 - Exploited the same geometrical idealism, which he accentuated through the
revival of the Corinthian order (an ancient Greek system of intertwined structure,
proportion, and decoration)
- Hospital of the innocents; Brunelleschi introduced a rigorous mathematical order
)(6&+26-(#5(-6&(*#%1',.(&L1/%.(-6&(.3/,(#5(-6&(/"*6&.P(&/*6(#5(-6&(,+,&(*1$&.(+.(-&,(
braccia
- Fusion of architectural and social order
- Unwanted pregnancy was major social issue - brunelleschi’s architectural order helped
create a sense of rationalism and stability that echoed the mission of the institution,
recovering the elite’s sense of communal norms
- Old sacristy - funeral chapel for the parish’s most prominent family - example of the
increasing importance of the expression of non aristocratic family pride in the religious
and secular sphere
- San Lorenzo important :1) use of ideal mathematical order asa reflection of divine order
2) revival of the basilican tradition
- Basilica: ancient roman building type that 14th century christians adapted when
churches were allowed to become architecturally ambitious buildings
- Return to the basilica type, like Brunelleschi’s use of classical details, was an
architectural badge of early modern Italy’s increasingly independent cultural identity.
- The form of the Pazzi Chapel is more interesting than its ostensible function
- Second (San Lorenzo’s Old Sacristy being the first) of a long line of Renaissance
experiments with centralised sacred spaces
- Pazzi Chapel, Brunelleschi replaced Gothic architec- ture’s emphasis on a mystic vision
of heaven with a lucid rationalism (with history and geometry)
- Brunelleschi can be considered the first early modern architect
- Brunelleschi (like mediaeval master builders) divorced from actual construction
- New respect for individuality and to find in architecture a means for personal as well as
communal expression
- Used history to derive from the past an approach to both form and its articulation and
ornamentation that was entirely modern in its logic
- Learned from Ancient Romans
- “The relationship he charted, however, between past and present, in which the recovery
of the past inspires an entirely new future, would be repeated in many early modern and
modern buildings, many of them designed, built, and occupied by women and men who
had no idea Brunelleschi had even existed”

W2 Drawings and Models, Chapter 5 - Conway Roenisch

- Drawing and models are the means by which architects communicate with other people
(prospective clients and the public) or give detailed instructions to a builder
- Allow architects to develop their ideas
- Indicate the architect’s approach to design and reveal their intentions at a particular
moment
- A small scale drawing with few details may be sufficient to convince a client of the merits
of a project
- Working drawings: Finished architectural drawings to be used by a contractor on site
- Form a legal contract between the owner and contractor
 - Drawings include plans, elevations, sections and sketches
- Give access to buildings
- Only surviving evidence of ephemeral structures (exhibition buildings erected for a few
months/ demolished or damaged buildings)

Plans
- Plan: Horizontal plane through a buildings (usually drawn at a level to give the
maximum amount of information
- Includes all openings (doors/windows
- Important to understand how the floors relate to the ground level outside (the
ground floor maye not be the only floor with exists and entrances and ground
level
- Plans should give the north point to show the orientation of the building
- Determines the type of natural light that will be available
- May be lacking in older plans
- Plans show how the shape of the exterior relates to the interior, how the inside of a
building works and the size, shape and disposition of the rooms
- Also show the general structure, whether it has load-bearing walls or is a frame
construction, and how the different floors relate to each other
- Can also see where the windows, the fireplaces, chimney flues and other services are
placed
- Can see the circulation routes for people to move around the building, and the
relationship between stairs, halls and passage- ways and the rooms they serve
- Can also see the kinds of activity possible in a building
- Difference in plan and actual building - architect or client changed their minds during
construction
- Additional information such as photographs, sections, elevations and models can be
related to the plans
- More information we have, the more we are able to discover

Architectural drawing conventions:

 - Plans of single buildings generally cannot tell us how they relate to their immediate
surroundings, or what the topography and character of the site are like
- City plans show how the streets are laid out and where the open spaces are
- but are not usually of a large enough scale to show the relationship between the
houses and the streets
- Street plans and Ordnance Survey maps show how buildings relate to the street
- Ordnance Survey maps can provide a fund of information

Scale
- Plans and models are always to scale
- Main factor governing the scale chosen is the level of information to be given
- Shows the relationship between rooms
- An axial plan means that the building is designed so that it is symmetrical about either
one or both axes
- Used in many cultures
- Traditional chinese dwellings

Axial plan? Classical plan?

- Classical plan: all four facades are symmetrical about their centre point and the interior
spaces are neatly symmetrical on either side of the north/south axis
 - Rooms are all geometrically shaped
- Classical planning involves symmetry, the organisation of clearly defined axes,
hierarchically planned rooms and, the use of poché (spaces between the main rooms)
- The rhythm of these elliptical forms at roof and ground level resonate in what has been
called ‘syncopated interpenetration’
- Foyers separate each element from its neighbour and the circulation routes around the
periphery of the plan provide a further organising framework that articulates the whole,
so the overall composition has logic, harmony and a hierarchy of elements.

Elevations
W3 ABC of Architecture - James F. O’Gorman