ABSTRACT
The concluding chapter discusses the reasons why axonometric drawings are still relevant. Their relevance lies in the production of architectural propositions and knowledge.
Architectural practice has completed its shift from mechanical drawing to digital models, resulting in a substantially different practice of drawing whilst the products might be said to be almost the same: architects still use axonometric drawings, but the crucial point is that they often make them differently by extracting a rendering from an already assembled digital model.
Some forms of inscriptive practice have more in common with musical performance, where the trace is the result of a set of gestures. Ingold (in Lines: a Brief History, 2007:72–75) contends that in many cases, the trace can be regarded as incidental, and that the process is what is important.
The practice of axonometric drawing gives designers the benefits of exploring components through cutaway and exploded drawings as well as a wide variety of scales from interior and furniture studies up to urban projects, all of which are difficult to replicate by other means. Massing, spatial relationships, and form are given in conjunction with surface detail and textures; the possibilities of the hidden line or reverse-angle projection all combine to give an architecture which has a regard for orderliness (even where that regard is subverted as in the case of Hejduk).
This chapter reinforces the central theme of the book: that drawing is not merely a manner for communicating a preformed idea held in the mind, but is rather a way of thinking through and developing that idea. As such, the conclusion is a defence of the process of making and thinking through axonometric drawings, something at risk should we not be mindful of the substantial changes being made in architectural practice.
