ABSTRACT

Tdeally, all architects should be competent to illustrate their own projects in perspective, Some do have the skill, but few have the time for more than scribbles, In the outsize offices oftoday, the principals' primary job is the coordination of specialists, and thc telephone is mightier than thc pencil. In a largc staff there should be at least one who can knock out adequatc 'office perspectives', though in temlS of time and salary he may prove relatively slow and expensive, and for special occasions inadequate, He may lack 'the professional touch' that is evident in a drawing which is, as Trystan Edwards has put it. 'consistent with itsclf' because the artist is seen to have done just what he set out to do, The office draughtsman can make a line perspective of the simple rectangular forms of the average commercial building, almost identical at that stage with what a professional would have produced, The further the rendering is carried beyond the line stage, the greater the differences, The amateur touch is most marked in a lack of selection and emphasis, The steeply foreshortened sports car filling a lower corner, or the sexy girl crossing the road, both cribbed from illustrations that served their original purposes weil, distract the attention, The 'look there I' that John Varley wanted in any picture is in the wrong place, Thc arnateur who is learning the resources ofhis medium is likely to be thinking more about the technique than about what he is trying to express by its means, A few big firms keep a tarne perspector busy in a back room, but most offices have to turn now and then to a Iree-lance, In London or New York there are usually about half a dozen such full-time practitioncrs aciive, and perhaps a dozen good part-tim crs in the second league,

However he may describc hirnself. the perspector finds that few laymen understand what it is he does, how he fits in, Some supposc that any perspective is 'the architect's drawing', as indeed it is often captioned in the press, The attributions 'Jones inv' and 'Smith delt' to distinguish between the designer and the illustrator are now academic bygones. Casual visiiors who see a perspector at work often suppose that he is designing the building, and that working drawings (which they call 'blueprints' ~·when did you last see a blueprint?) will be made from his pcrspective.