Streamlining studio to avoid redundancy: This is a little advice about presenting

design work for critique, to reduce excess workload by eliminating unnecessary

duplication in what you have to make and focusing your energy on making your
drawings work to articulate your ideas.
According to your studio handout, you will be graded on:
- Clarity of building and landscape organization
- Level of spatial articulation of building and landscape
- Craft of drawings and models
My advice here is extremely general. It concerns gaining awareness of what you
mean to communicate in each drawing.

Superstudio, The Continuous Monument, collage, 1969

Winton drawings tips

Drawings and models have two main purposes: 1. to be a working laboratory

for your hunches, analyses and design explorations, or 2. As a vehicle to
communicate your key ideas to critics, professors, and classmates.
Be a poet, not just a problem-solver. Situating your project in cultural
phenomena gives you material to enrich your design process and anchors your work
in the world of human meanings.
Be strategic in what you present, in how you present your ideas. Presenting your
project takes the same approach as writing a quiz: you take a position based on your
inspirations and ideas about the program and site, and present evidence to persuade
others that your position is valid. Your design (the evidence) substantiates your
position and approach to the problem assigned, and the forms of representation you
use (models, drawings, collages, sketches etc.) give emphasis and focus to those
aspects which are most important to you, to make them seem plausible, and draw
the attention of the critics to those aspects, and hold their attention.
Every studio project you design will include certain personal concerns that guide your
architectural investigation. Whether you are investigating the threshold or the wall as
a theme, or your project is about light, or an exploration of concrete, Darwin, 2001:
A Space Odyssey, medieval bestiaries, earthworks, or Noahs Ark, you want to be
sure that your interests are legibly conveyed in each drawing you present. This will
make it easier for you to choose which drawings to make and include, and for your
critics to engage and give you feedback in greater depth.
Ensure that the characteristic and critical aspects of your project are clearly
represented in the drawing or modelling convention that best expresses them. Make
sure you know just which principal ideas you are intending to communicate with each
drawing, and how all the drawings work together to convey your principal idea(s).
Avoid redundancy; each drawing should offer new information not included on the
other drawings.
Each drawing convention has its special uses. A site plan has different levels of
information and conventions of representation from a 1:50 section or a 1:5 faade
detail. When you plan presentations, decide what key information about your project
is being presented in any given diagram, sketch, drawing, or model. Every scale of
representation shows a different kind of information, which to be legible doesnt need
to be cluttered with additional layers.
A parti diagram is schematic, and shows the general
conceptual or formal scheme organizing the elements.
Its normally a planimetric diagram, but could be
sectional.

Winton drawings tips

Map of Wittenburg from Hartman Schedel, Liber Chronicarum, 1493

A site plan shows topography and how your infrastructure and design links in to the
surrounding fabric or landscape elements. Think of the map of the city of Wittenburg
I showed you in class, demonstrating how the internal organization of the city links
in to the natural features (like rivers, cliffs) and roads surrounding it. Shadowed site
plans show topography well, if you arent rendering it or making a model.
As you progress in scale from zoomed-out to zoomed-in, the level of detail and
feeling for materiality and tectonics increases. This results in an increase in
articulation (an increasingly finer grain of detailing reflected in the line-work of the
drawings) and calibration of the diagram, as ideal geometries or armatures inflect to
reflect particular material circumstances.

Winton drawings tips

Museum site sections, Roman Forum, Steve Chodoriwsky, Rome 2003

A site section can tell various stories, as it implies movement. It can be an
ecological transect, an urban armature, or show a process of metamorphosis as one
moves through it by way of threshold conditions, or reveal a narrative, or a journey,
or a series of different moods and atmospheres.
Plans and sections: dont make generic spaces, rather give each one a sense of
place through character and orientation to what exists outside of it. Think about
figure-ground, what stands out. When you lay out a plan or cut a section, ask
yourself what you want the critics to notice, and how you will bring those features to
their attention. Its good to include at least one figure in a section for scale. Public
buildings use a larger scale of elements than private ones. Halls, stairs, doors are all
wider. Learn to rationalize your plans (make things cohere, line up, etc.) by studying
plans by good architects.
Elevations: these should be expressive of whats going on beyond, like the
frontispiece of a book, an elevation is the projected public image and summary of
the approach. This is where the public recognizes the building or complex as one of
its own concerns. Entrance visibility is very important. Dont forget to include
background and context.
When using perspective views, or sketched and scanned vignettes, or other threedimensional drawings, consider where the view is taken from, and what its focus is.
Think of Renaissance paintings, or photography, or graphic novels / comic books: in
all cases there is some meaning to where the viewer stands and the direction in
which they are aiming their feet and eyes. That way you avoid making vignettes that
dont particularly show anything.
These can reveal a sense of movement, and relationships between spaces, including
foreground and background. Consider how you choose your point of view in space,

Winton drawings tips

intentionality (movement of the gaze), horizon of vision, framing of the drawing,

foreground detail, and other relevant issues.
Generally speaking, in drawings and models, your smaller moves (including detailing,
ornamental colour or pattern, material choices, surface finishes, use of light,
rhythms, symmetries) should be shown to support the larger moves (schematic
form, driving ideas) in the project.

I like to situate my perspective viewpoint with something architectural in the

foreground (the frame of a doorway, a column, a detail etc.) as well as in the
background, so that you get a sense of spatial extension in between, and potentially
see up close a connection detail or material texture and colour that conveys
character.
Take care to use correct line weights for each scale of drawing, because there are
conventions for how architects read lines of particular thicknesses. If you are not
sure, grab a good architecture in detail type magazine from the library and copy how
walls, windows, doors etc. are rendered. Walls, floors etc. need to have an
appropriate and plausible thickness, depending on what they are made of. Poch can
make them stand out. Use graphic scales which can be eyeballed. Labelling drawings
with program (with a font legible from the critics chair) saves a long waste of
talking in the beginning of a crit. A standard north arrow is vital, and all your plans
should be oriented similarly.
This may not apply for this project, but generally while drawing and modelling your
presentation material should clearly distinguish existing fabric and structures from
your own interventions. This should be the case with the critical details showing the
connections, joints and reveals as well as in the plans, sections, site plan, etc.

Winton drawings tips

In design development present the highest level to which you have developed
each of the explorations, without too much concern about consistency between all
the parts.
In presentation work, your main concern will be legibility as an overall set of
connected drawings, as well as a clear set of relations, narratives, meanings
emphasized in each individual drawing or model. Show section lines on your plan.
Key fragment models into your site plan.

Xhystos: Francois Shuiten, Benoit Peeters, Les Cites Obscures, Les murailles de
Samaris, 1982
Be sure to use your drawings to show the various relationships between the visitor,
the architecture, and one or more animals.

Make beautiful projects!

Winton drawings tips