Unconventional projections throw a fresh light on architecture

Drawing is inextricable from practising architecture. It visualises creative ideas, communicates design intent and dictates how a building is perceived. Yet, day to day, drawing is mostly confined to bog-standard floor plans, sections and elevations.

Here we explore unusual, engaging and enlightened projections from the RIBA Collections; through edited excerpts from a new book A Practical Guide to Architectural Drawing: RIBA Collections by Edward Denison and Guang Yu Ren. It’s a chance to encounter ways of drawing that are often overlooked. Also, to learn how they work technically and what they convey. And in doing so, perhaps stimulate different ways of seeing and understanding buildings.

The conventions of linear perspective have been a staple of architectural drawing in Europe for centuries. However, in many non-European contexts, entirely different and often more effective techniques have been used for much longer.

The above panorama by architect Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi uses multiple viewpoints and vanishing points simultaneously to depict many moments along a richly illustrated street scene. Each view is curated independently of the next, telling different stories and creating alternating rhythms of crowds and space, height and colour.

In contrast to the bird’s-eye view, the above drawing by Boyd Auger is a rare example where the subject appears to float above the viewer. It shows an unbuilt new town in Italy, with dwellings scattered over craggy terrain.

The low perspective view highlights the spatial interrelationship between the dwellings and their relative position to one another on the hillside. It also provides a vantage point beneath the buildings, as if ascending the slope.

This drawing of an Indian temple reflects representational techniques and storytelling traditions associated with Mughal miniatures. It accommodates multi-perspectival views, such as a true elevation of the dome atop an isometric hexagonal tower, and different narrative elements. Interior views show the life within the building, while gardens and figures outside it are not represented to scale. Unhindered by the constraints of Euclidean logic, this way of drawing evocatively communicates subjectivities, experiences, emotions and a sense of time and place.

A structure with irregular forms or a space containing variously positioned objects that do not conform to one or two-point perspectives requires multiple vanishing points along a horizon line. This method, which relies on numerous individual points of perspective, is called multi-point perspective.

This drawing, by Dutch painter, engineer and architect Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-1609), illustrates the principle using three piles of variously placed orthogonal blocks.

A Practical Guide to Architectural Drawing: RIBA Collections, by Edward Denison and Guang Yu Ren, explores why and how we draw and is a visually stunning guide for those wanting to develop their graphic and representation skills. It is published by RIBA Publishing, September 2024.