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Architecture
VICTOR BALTARD IN THE CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES of architecture, film-set design, and computer game each
French architect employed imaging, we find the most recent steps in the evolution of graphic language. Computer
by the city of Paris, Baltard programs allow the virtual drawing of ideas. Through the animation of the screen,
designed the Church of architects and designers can imaginatively "climb inside" three-dimensional space and.
St. Augustin, which was once there, add and subtract ideas, drawing plans around themselves within a program as
the first church in the capital opposed to on a flat sheet of paper.
to be built entirely of metal
and then clad in stone.This Architects have been fine-tuning their specialized branch of drawing for centuries.
is a pencil drawing, with Besides sketches of first thoughts and polished drawings of the finished look for clients,
gray and brown watercolor they also have a diagrammatic language for communicating plans to builders. At the core
wash, of the west facade of their practice, to help them create new form, they have the Golden Section. It was the
of St Augustin, made by mathematicians, philosophers, and architects of ancient Greece who first pursued the
the architect himself.The formula for "divine proportion," reflecting the eye's love of unity in difference. This
church is still in use today. harmony, which can be clearly seen in ancient Greek architecture, was preserved into the
Renaissance where it became a foundation stone for thinking and creativity From 15th-
West Facade of the Church century Italy, the formula for perfection spread through Europe, and in the 19th century
of St Augustin, Paris it was given the name the Golden Section. It was also during the Renaissance that
the architect Brunelleschi invented linear perspective, the device that has since
1871-74 governed most of our picture-making (sec pp. 74-75).
VICTOR BALTARD Since the first flowering of Modernism in the early 20th century, architects, designers,
composers, filmmakers, fine artists, and writers have been breaking away from
traditional forms of representation to seek new expressions of shape, mass, balance,
space, time, and sound. Since Picasso and Braque's revolution of Cubism in around 1907.
European conventions of pictorial perspective have lost their monopoly on seeing. Yet the
pursuit of divine proportion and harmony remains. Perhaps in the sheer planes of some
of our greatest modern buildings it is finding its clearest expression.
Among the drawings of this chapter we look from 17th-century ecclesiastical calm. to
20th-century film fantasy; from political commentary to musical abstraction; and from
the child's view to the infinity of the vanishing point. Linear perspective is a marvelous
device, invaluable to understand and apply when you choose. It is the focus of
practical class in this chapter, coupled with the importance of exercizing your imagination.
