1 Draw a full-page grid in your sketchbook that is composed of 10mm squares.
2 Now find an object to draw and place it on a table. It could be a vase, a cup, a pencil case or anything that is no bigger than a third of your sketchbook page.
3 Using a 3m tape measure, record the dimensions of your object. Now use the grid in your sketchbook to draw a real size (1:1 scale) plan (a horizontal plane through the object), elevation (a side view as viewed from the front, back, left or right) and section (a plane through the object) views of the object.
4 On a fresh sheet draw another full-page grid made of 10mm squares. Each square of this grid will have a different value from the squares in your first grid. The first grid allowed you to record 10mm of the object’s information
in each square. The value of each square in this new grid will need to incorporate twice as much of the object’s information (20mm).
5 Now draw plan, section and elevation views of the object at 1:2 scale. The resultant drawings will now be half the object’s real size (1:2).
6 On a fresh sheet draw another full-page grid made of 10mm squares.
7 Now draw a plan, elevation and section view of this object at 1:20 scale. Each square of your grid should now accommodate 200mm. You will have to now draw more information around the object. Details of the table, the room and any other surrounding details will need to be included.
8 On a fresh sheet draw another full-page grid made of 10mm squares.
9 Draw a plan and section of the object at 1:200 scale.
Each square is worth 2000mm so the drawings will feature even more of the object’s detail, the table and the surrounding space.
Each of these drawings is 10 times smaller than the preceding one. The grid has remained static at 10mm real size, but each drawing becomes relatively smaller, and displays the level or detail and information that is relevant at each scale ratio.
Representational techniques
Project: Student housing proposal Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Designer: Jeremy Davies Date: 2007
This housing scheme proposes a nine-storey block that responds to local (windy) climatic conditions and also exploits its orientation (as a south-facing block) to encourage passive heating through a glazed atrium space.
This section drawing explains all aspects of the scheme. It connects the building to the ground and its context, describes its orientation and the internal connections created via the building’s atrium space.
Displaying a proposed piece of architecture as a series of drawings presents an interesting challenge.
The information in the drawings needs to be both accurate and interconnected to tell the story of the building and communicate the proposed scheme clearly using a system that is universally recognised and understood. These drawings are two-dimensional images that need to be read and interpreted as a threedimensional building or space.
Orthographic projection refers to a system of interrelated two-dimensional views of a building. This system includes the views from above or a horizontal cross section of a building (the plan), the views from the side of a building (the elevation) and the views of vertical ‘cuts’ or cross sections of the building (the section). These drawings can be collectively referred to as a ‘full set’ and will include all floor plans, the roof plan, all elevations and a series of vertical ‘cuts’ that explain the internal and external relationships of the building.
The purpose of these drawings is to technically describe how to physically realise a conceptual idea. The plan is drawn first and section and elevations are then drawn alongside it. Using CAD software, the plans will be carefully drawn on different ‘layers’ ensuring that the floor plan of the ground and subsequent floors align. This set of drawings then needs to be printed so that the elevations, plans and sections can be seen alongside one another.
Reading plan section and elevation drawings correctly is a skill, and understanding the drawing conventions and the symbols used in them is a necessary part of acquiring this skill. This chapter describes how the convention of plan, section and elevation are used to describe architectural ideas and design buildings and structures.
A plan is an orthographic projection of a threedimensional object from the position of a horizontal plane through the object. In other words, a plan is a section viewed from above. To plan an architectural idea is to develop and organise its scheme. This is an important and iterative process when designing architecture and the end product of this process is the plan drawing.
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Project: Chattock House Location: Newport, Wales Architect: John Pardey Architects Date: 2007 The site for this house sits on the northern edge of the Newport Estuary in Pembrokeshire National Park, which is on the westernmost coast of Wales. These plans locate the site of the house and provide information about the immediate context of the site by displaying the surrounding buildings and landscape. The larger plan shows more detail of the landscape around the house and the contours suggest the slope of the site. |
Architecture evolves as the plan of a scheme is drawn and redrawn again and again, perhaps shifting elements such as doors and openings, or changing descriptions of the space and its connections with any rooms around it. Creating the plan is the most volatile part of the design process. What starts as a diagram of spaces and shapes with associated functions, becomes more refined as the design evolves.
Planning architecture requires an understanding and appreciation of the relationships between the different spaces within a proposed building or structure. Generating an overview of the whole building is the necessary first step towards this understanding. The overview drawing will be composed as a series of rooms and spaces that are connected by circulation (stairs, lifts or corridors for example).
Once the overview plan has been designed, the building’s individual rooms need to be planned in detail by introducing furniture, doors and other elements. As the individual plans of the rooms are worked out, the floor plan is likely to require adjustment as the relationship between the building, its rooms, their functions, and the use of materials, geometry, symmetry and route are further developed.
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