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Perspective Project: Rotterdam Photography Museum Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands Designer: David Yeates Date: 2007 |
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This scheme used the museum’s subject matter, photography, as its concept generator. The building was a projection screen to the outside space. This CAD perspective is generated from CAD software. |
Perspective views can be single-, two-, or three-point representations. These points correspond to the number of points at which all lines in the drawing appear to converge. Each point of convergence is called the vanishing point.
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Three-dimensional images |
A single-point perspective drawing has a central vanishing point, which will exaggerate the sense of a space’s depth. Single-point perspective is often used for interior drawings. Two-point perspective images are often used to describe smaller buildings in a space or street context. Three-point perspective images are used to describe larger buildings and their surrounding environment and context.
A constructed perspective is a freehand drawing created from plan, section and elevation information. To create a constructed perspective it is first necessary to decide the standpoint of the drawing and to then use the section and elevation drawings to suggest the details of heights of spaces and openings such as doors and windows. There are important principles when creating a perspective image; these are:
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The horizon |
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Sketch perspective |
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Constructed perspective |
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Project: Student housing scheme Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands Designer: Jeremy Davies Date: 2007 |
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The eye-level line in a perspective drawing is referred to as the horizon. The point of horizon is normally about 1.6 metres above floor level, but this can be altered to obtain different viewpoints (such as a worm’s – or a bird’s – eye view). |
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To sketch in perspective is to first observe and study a view, and then draw to achieve an image that accurately renders that view. This requires some consideration of the vanishing point and of the horizon. Sketch perspective is a useful tool to quickly communicate a realistic impression of an existing space or to suggest a design concept. |
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This sketch perspective drawing effectively uses colour to animate the building’s elevation. Scaled figures are also used to give a sense of reality and activity to the space around the building. |
all lines must converge into the vanishing point,
figures should get smaller as they move towards the centre of the image and towards the vanishing point,
space and depth must be maintained in the image to reinforce the illusion of the perspective and its suggested reality.
Project: SaYd Business School, Oxford University Location: Oxford, UK Architects: Dixon Jones Date: 2005
This worm’s eye view axonometric drawing presents an unusual abstract perspective of a proposal for a courtyard space in the Sad Business School. The image allows the scale of the space to be quickly understood.
An axonometric drawing (which is also known as a plan oblique drawing) is produced from a plan drawing and is the easiest of the three-dimensional projections to draw. Axonometric drawings allow an overall aerial view of an object. The advantage an axonometric drawing provides to the architect is that it allows an understanding of both the plan and the building’s internal or external elevations.
Architectural historian Auguste Choisy (1841-1909) first used axonometric drawings in the nineteenth century and they have been employed by numerous influential twentieth – century artists and architects ever since, including the Russian Constructivists, Kasemir Malevich (1878-1935),
El Lissitzky (1890-1941) and Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964).
For these artists and architects axonometric drawings connected very well with their avant-garde architectural and artistic style. For example, the axonometric technique complemented the De Stijl movement’s cubist forms of architecture. Today architects such as Zaha Hadid continue to favour axonometric techniques as a signature style of expression.
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Project: Phare Tower Location: Paris, France Architects: Morphosis Date: 2006 The Phare Tower scheme in Paris comprises not only of the tower element, but also a lower building that connects with the surrounding urban space. This diagram explains the connections between these building elements and how they relate to the streetscape. |
Art and architecture
Constructivism
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural movement in Russia from 1919 onward that dismissed ‘pure’ art in favour of an art that was used as an instrument for social purposes, specifically the construction of a socialist system.
De Stijl
De Stijl, from the Dutch term for ‘the style’, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. De Stijl was also the name of a journal that was published by the painter and critic Theo van Doesburg. Next to Van Doesburg, the group’s principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian and Bart van der Leck, and the architects Gerrit Rietveld and JJP Oud.
Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour — they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colours along with black and white.