The practice, scope and exactitude of today’s architectural drawings derives from an important evolution in architectural communication before and after industrialization. Architecture and construction influenced by mass production developed into the rational assembly of manufactured and catalogued components. Post-industrial technical drawings instructed builders replacing clerkships and craft-based traditions and knowledge sharing. The extent to which an architect details his/her designs signals how obsessive he/she is about how things ought to be put together. The modern architect used drawings to verbalize knowledge about components and processes. Systemic integration was key in drawings as they indicated the coherent union of disparate building elements. Holistic architectural thought merged with industrial production to underline modernity’s obsession with detailing.
A masterful talent for drawing posited a comprehensive attitude toward architecture and construction. This relationship between drawing, architecture, assembly and construction is remarkably displayed in the drawings of Australian architect Glenn Murcutt. By integrating industrialized components in an overall project vision through careful and meticulous detailing, Murcutt’s work is recognized both through beautiful built works and intricate drawings. Murcutt’s conversant assembly of basic industrialized components was arguably shaped by the colonization of Australia, perhaps best represented by the Iron houses shipped from Great Britain during the gold rush. Corrugated iron simply fastened to iron struts and beams made for a simple no frills building system. This type of simple building strategy anchored in tradition produces a specifically rooted modernism in Murcutt’s designs.
Murcutt’s drawings reveal a preoccupation for describing, listing, itemizing, juxtaposing and ordering components and their fastenings. The section drawing shown below for Murcutt’s Alderton House (1992) is a typical Murcutt production. The architect’s attention to detail is applied to every aspect of systemic integration from the project’s anchorage to its site through foundations to how piping from plumbing equipment can be organized. The section uses varying line thicknesses to masterfully illustrate parts that are is sectioned from parts that are not, to clarify depth, space, scale as well as specific components. Murcutt’s drawings are fundamental to understanding how detail is perceived in contemporary architecture. Not only is it a way of bringing building parts together but doing so to achieve an overall harmonic understanding of the total project.
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| Alderton house section - scanned from private book collection |
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