Architect’s construction drawings are not pictures
Photo by Karen Zhao on Unsplash (mashed up with a detail from Kimbell Art Museum by Renzo Piano)
How do you draw ‘beautiful’ construction drawings?
It’s natural for you to want to be good at producing high-quality construction drawings. I know this because I work with people striving to do just that, and I’m still trying to figure it out myself.
Of course, you need to be able to draw and have good graphical skills. However, for the drawings to be successful, you also need a good understanding of construction processes, how to organise and present complex information, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of construction technology.
For someone just starting out, that’s a fairly daunting prospect.
Acquiring all the necessary skills and knowledge will take time. The temptation is to start by relying on what you already know, which often means spending time trying to make your drawings look good. However, this only serves to put off the more difficult task of developing the expertise required to perfect the content of the drawings.
While you’re learning, it will be beneficial to start looking at construction drawings differently. You need to see them from the perspective of the people who will use them. The builders, fabricators and makers who will realise your designs.
You need to change the way you see them.
Don’t see construction drawings as pictures…
When you think of the watercolour drawings of the 18th and 19th centuries, the blueprints of the 20th century and the integrated 3D model drawings of recent years, they have an inherent beauty. Many of them could easily be regarded as works of art that could hang on a wall.
However, the real purpose of construction drawings is not to look good. That’s just a by-product. Yes, they have to be legible and understandable, but their primary job is to tell the builder what you want to build. Therefore, you need to focus more clearly on what that is and how best to tell someone else about it through drawings.
See construction drawings as instructions…
In this post, I want to encourage you to start thinking about construction drawings as instructions to the builder. Instructions that will ensure that the build turns out as you want it.
If you come at it from this perspective, your construction drawings will improve. They’ll probably look better, too.
Surface appeal vs. underlying form
If you know anything about art history, you will have some appreciation of the difference between how things appear and how things are, what they look like and what they mean. For instance, you can initially admire a painting for its overall visual appeal - the first impression it creates. However, you also know that your opinion will be affected (positively or negatively) as you learn about the artist, the context in which the painting was produced and what the artist was trying to do or say.
My awareness of the issue was greatly influenced as a teenager when I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author, Robert Pirsig, discusses motorcycle engines to introduce the concept of romantic and classic points of view. According to Pirsig, a person with a romantic view might admire a motorcycle engine only for its external appearance. That is the intrinsic beauty that results from its form, materials and sculptural qualities.
By contrast, someone with a classic point of view might admire the same motorcycle engine, not for what it looks like, but because they understand how it works, how to maintain it and how to repair it when it goes wrong. They might know who designed it and why it was designed the way it was. They might know the problems that were overcome during its development and where it sits in the ongoing story of motorcycle engine technology.
You need to see construction drawings from this classic perspective because construction drawings are all about underlying form. Their surface appeal results from their underlying form and not vice versa.
Other kinds of drawn instructions…
Other situations where drawings are used to provide instructions for building or making things include those for flat pack furniture, kit models or other craft projects.
These drawn instructions usually include a step-by-step guide or method of ‘how’ to build the thing in question. They give the construction sequence: this goes here, then that goes there. They don’t spend much time describing the detail of the thing in question or the nature of its component parts.
In general, construction drawings are not like this. They comprise a set of drawings (plans, sections, details, etc.) that describe the building in its completed state as if it had already been assembled. They don’t normally describe how to do things in the same way as kit instructions do. They don’t tell the bricklayer how to lay bricks or the carpenter how to erect a timber frame.
Architect’s construction drawings are different
But if the architect’s construction drawings are unlike these drawn instructions, why bother mentioning them? What is there to learn from them?
The big thing to take away from kit instructions is that they’re always written with the maker in mind. They assume the maker hasn’t made one of these things before and attempt to provide a foolproof guide.
Because architect’s construction information describes the building in its completed state, the drawing process doesn’t encourage us to think about the builder. It doesn’t encourage us to think about the building process or how successfully the builder will be able to interpret our drawings. But these are things that we must learn to do.
Some examples from Glen Murcutt
In the drawing above by Glen Murcutt (larger version here), there are plenty of notes which simply describe the various components of the building. This is as you would expect for a typical set of construction drawings, where the building is drawn in its fully assembled state. For example there are numerous notes stating the nature of materials and products, such as:
“Vental external venetian blinds natural aluminium anodised finish. Allow for electrical operation”.
“Jetmaster (Northbridge) S.S. rotating cowl”.
“Finish walls and ceilings 3 coat oil paint, British Paints, flat ceilings and walls, doors semi-gloss”.
“RC slab on ‘Bondek’ to engineers details”.
Let’s call these Type 1 notes.
But there are also plenty of notes that do other things, too. For instance, notes alerting the builder to certain important architectural relationships, reminding them of particular things that must be included, or pointing out something about the drawing:
“Note how rails line up through house”.
“This level also to CL of wall switch plates”.
“Allow for chicken wire over purlins”.
“Form true hole in gyproc, comply with fire regs in ceiling penetration”.
“Allow for gate valves to each water riser for sprinklers set through column web, operate from rear”.
“*Tanks and tank stands not shown”.
Let’s call these Type 2 notes.
The Type 2 notes are evidence of the architect imagining the construction of the building as he’s producing the drawing. He’s effectively noting what he would be saying to the builder if they were both discussing the drawing on site during the build. He’s thinking about the builder and what the builder needs to know.
Here’s another project by Glen Murcutt from an article containing more construction drawings. Look at them and see if you can identify the use of Type 2 instructions. You’re looking for those aspects that you could regard as the ‘conversation’ between the architect and the builder. A conversation that takes place through the medium of the construction drawings.
What does it mean?
At the beginning of this post, I asked, ‘How do you draw ‘beautiful’ construction drawings’? I hope, by now, that you’re beginning to see that by ‘beautiful’, I meant ‘successful’. In other words, a good construction drawing successfully results in the building being constructed as you designed it.
What the drawing looks like is of secondary importance.
You will know that when drawings illustrating details of buildings appear in journals, they have usually been redrawn for publication. Therefore, it is impossible to know whether they are a reliable version of the information used to construct the building. The chances are that they’re not.
The same thing can be said when looking at construction drawings for projects you were not involved in. Without involvement, it’s impossible for you to know whether the drawings were successful. You can’t know for certain that you’re looking at the final versions the builder used and whether you possess the full set of drawings.
You won’t know about the actual conversations on site between the architect and the builder, which resulted in the drawing being ‘marked up’ and agreed upon at the last minute. You won’t know about the additional drawings that the builder produced themself in order to clarify things for their own purposes. And so on.
What can you do?
Practice is the place to learn about these issues, and it is up to you to take advantage of the office you’re working in. Start looking at construction drawings differently.
- Look through sets of construction drawings in the office. The printed working sets which have been marked up are best. Read the notes and scribbles. Keep a library of useful drawings for future reference.
- For selected projects, talk to the people who did the drawings. Ask how successful they were? What issues came up?
- Do site visits and talk to the builders. Find out who has actually seen the drawings. Ask them what they think about the drawings? What issues did they have? What would they have done differently?
- Get to work on projects at the technical design stage. Work with more experienced architects and technicians. Have a go yourself. Keep asking questions. Get feedback on what you’re doing.
- Make sure you’re involved in the construction phase of the project. Keep asking questions and keep seeking feedback.
Construction drawings are not static representations of your design. They are instructions to a builder to make or build your design. Many things will happen as a result of what you say in the drawings. It’s vital to keep in mind how your drawings will be interpreted by the people who will use them.
A working drawing is a letter to a builder telling precisely what to build; not a picture to charm the client.
Edwin Lutyens (quoted by Keith Snook in BIM in The Real World (BRE))