ABSTRACT
Architecture and drawing form a close partnership. While it may be possible to build without drawing first, one or more diagrams still inhabit the architecture. When people survey a building, they can easily record their observations in a drawing. More importantly, people can tease out the inherent diagram that illuminates the intent of the designer. Orthographic drawings create views that project themselves perpendicularly from the spatial whole, without perspective. This is the fundamental convention for both visualizing and designing buildings. Doors and windows, continuous and broken surfaces might capture their attention and perhaps their approval. It may be pleasant or not, of a familiar sort or a novelty. However, from such casual observation nothing important arises. Architects today utilize both circumstantial and preconceived systems of order. Contemporary practice allows for both a focus on abstract ordering systems and a concern with particular forms contingent on circumstance.
