Architects' Sketchbooks from Thames & Hudson
Architecture books present completed projects, set in their sites. They are usually enriched with plans and details that guide us through the technical choices made by the practice and its engineering consultants. Thames & Hudson has turned its attention to the very first phase of a project, the moment when architects develop their ideas and draw the first lines of the building. Architects' Sketchbooks presents the early-stage work of 85 leading architects through 765 illustrations.
As you turn the pages, you realise that this is not just another architecture book but rather a manifesto signed by some of the great names of architecture, such as Shigeru Ban and Norman Foster.
The book reveals the various processes the practices rely on as they think a project through. Sketching is repeatedly highlighted as a way of passing ideas between the different parties involved in a project. Sketches allow them to communicate. The practice A4 Studio overlays photographs and sketches, explaining: "This is essential if you want everyone to work with the same enthusiasm as you on a project".
The digital age is very much present, perhaps a little too much so, and many contributors warn students of the pitfalls of relying on 3D software such as Allplan or AutoCAD. Readers may be surprised by the importance given to sketches, as at Elliott+Associates, which produces genuine scrolls for its clients, some as long as 32 metres, which then rest quietly in a bank vault.
But the book does not stop at freehand sketches. It presents a range of methods that launch and underpin a project: the relationship between drawing, the model and the digital tool. It prompts genuine reflection on the importance of preliminary work, whether it is done in pencil, in pastel, on a graphics tablet or through models.
- Title: Carnets d'Architectes
- Author: Will Jones
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson
- Translation: Gilles Berton
- Illustrations: 765
- Pages: 352
- Format: 31 x 24 cm
- Weight: 1,950 g
- ISBN: 978-2-87811-363-1
- Release date: February 2011
- Price: €39.95
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