Architectural Drawing Course: Tools and Techniques for 2D and 3D Representation

by Mo Zell

High school and college students who have a budding interest in architectural design will value this book for its solid foundational orientation and instruction. Author Mo Zell introduces readers to architecture's visual language, showing them how to think spatially and getting them started in architectural drawing with a series of instructive tutorials. Presenting three-dimensional design problems, she coaches students through the fundamentals of proportion and scale, space and volume, path and place, and materials and textures. A series of 40 work units covers virtually every aspect of architectural drawing,

Genres: Architecture, Design, Reference, Nonfiction, Drawing, Art

144 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

Reviews

[Mark Cosslett · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is at least the third book I've acquired in my quest for the study of architecture that has been a huge disappointment.

This is a modern book, full colour, great graphic layouts dedicated to archaic methods. It wastes it's glorious pages upon descriptions of how to hand draw, cut out, paste and glue things together as if CAD hadn't even been invented yet, let alone been around for 35 years and accessible to stand-alone architects for the last 25.

Don't get me wrong, if I had ordered a book on "traditional" drafting and 3D modeling techniques this book would be the bomb. But for a modern book on 3D Representation (in the title!) to only give CAD a cursory mention at best is IMHO unconscionable.

It would be like purchasing a modern book on photography editing techniques and it goes on and on about how to doge and burn B&W in a dark room, then sort of as a side note at the end saying, "and there are also colour processing techniques, scanning, and digital photography that lend themselves to computer use."

I wouldn't be so bewildered if I could find one (even just one) book on the market dedicated to the use of ArchiCAD 16 (the software I'm using which is amazing but highly complex to learn on your own) in place of the plethora of these books which discuss hand drafting, erasing, gluing and pasting ad-infinitum. If anyone finds one out there please let me know!

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is titled as a drawing course, and in the intro, it says it's designed for beginners. Wrong on both counts. Only a handful of pages were useful in the slightest in increasing my ability to take an idea from my head and put it down on paper with clarity.

There was a lot of 'what' and 'why' in the book - going into theories, different schools of thought. Good maybe for getting you to think outside the box. Really not helpful as a foundational course. Apparently I'm not cut out for architecture, but I still think I'm an intelligent person and thought I could glean something out of this, but I couldn't make much of it. A lot of the basic definitions were still so complexly worded as to be useless. Even after looking terms up in the glossary (since they were used over and over but never defined for a newbie) I still didn't have a great understanding.

As for the 'how' - what I actually wanted to learn from the book - some things were reiterated multiple times, though without conveying a good understanding of the topic or adding anything in each iteration. Some aspects were covered incompletely or unsatisfactorily, at least to me. Maybe 10 pages from the whole book helped me learn what I wanted.

Overall, I was not impressed. Maybe if you're actually a student of architecture, and have some sort of foundation, this would be a good book to help advance your knowledge. For everyone else, look for help elsewhere.

[Elyse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should just have bought a book about drawing perspective instead of this one. I found this book to be all over the place, and why is there so many wood model making in this? I am not a student in architecture, was just looking for a book to learn couple trick about drawing building. I do not think this is the book for that.

[nocka · Rating 1 out of 5]

I keep doing the same mistake: I buy books to learn art/architecture/etc. and since I am a student of art high school, I never ever see anything new. Well, yes, it might be useful for BEGINNERS who has no idea about drawing at all, but except this, it's rather useless.

[Nuno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tiene algunas ideas interesantes. Las tareas o miniproyectos que propone también lo son. Ahora bien, no lo calificaría de "curso" de dibujo arquitectónico... Cosas de los editores, supongo.