ABSTRACT
Through practical geometry, Renaissance plans were understood to describe the planar dimensions of length and width. The vertical dimension is in the Vitruvian orthographia or upright drawing, a combination of modern ideas of elevation and section. It is closely related to upright posture and intertwines physical verticality with moral attitudes. This is shown in Vitruvius’s discussion of the origin of architecture as well as early twentieth-century posture training at elite universities. The plumb line was interpreted as connecting the centre of the earth through the upright posture to the heavens above. In the Renaissance, raising buildings up from the ground plane corresponds with imparting the vegetal or natural soul. Origins of T-square and triangle are in construction tools and they define the relationships between horizontal and vertical lines. Orthography is not originally part of the rational theory of projectors that was imposed on earlier practices. Instead of standing at infinity, the orthographic eye scans across the building surface at a reasonable distance. The absence of depth in orthographic drawings allows imagining different possibilities through the upright drawing.
