![#](https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Nataly-Eliseeva.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=314&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=210&s=838d360a72db7a7cd88509faae80689d 210w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Nataly-Eliseeva.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=627&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=420&s=f5289188f0a00732d911d471fce2e015 420w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Nataly-Eliseeva.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1147&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=768&s=5166a6bb2ee5b10ba9183a6f95f3938a 768w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Nataly-Eliseeva.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1529&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1024&s=b6bb5f4e04050bb981f899473a6f25ef 1024w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Nataly-Eliseeva.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2091&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1400&s=794afc870556c8452b850e3d35dfda2b 1400w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Nataly-Eliseeva.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2389&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1600&s=c1ae8b0ad40e4901e59a0b8aae903890 1600w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Nataly-Eliseeva.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2867&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1920&s=a38bff4dcf60630c71ff11a6f3583cbe 1920w)
![#](https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Chris-Dove.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=137&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=210&s=10a783ae40fa50731c1c5009f793abba 210w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Chris-Dove.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=274&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=420&s=451f2e338ee6f9216425e7706e4a9961 420w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Chris-Dove.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=502&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=768&s=40cc6e3bcfc0befa045cf3bc8d0f6b88 768w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Chris-Dove.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=669&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1024&s=6260327baa759825ede8bbd26aa9f146 1024w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Chris-Dove.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=914&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1400&s=24a6133d71f9cb4dc17b1beea81c1698 1400w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Chris-Dove.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1045&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1600&s=5111d610a8e0a8dd23bac85eb5990d32 1600w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Chris-Dove.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1254&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1920&s=560613d61c74cd15bdd4d1978add8426 1920w)
What is so very remarkable about these century-old visionary drawings is that they portray a future building type – verging on the ethereal and more or less impossible to realise at the time – in the earthiest of drawing materials. It had been a stroke of genius to use charcoal to evoke an architecture of lightness rising from the embers of the trenches that would revolutionise the way we shaped tall buildings and with them our city streets. Such is the power of drawing by hand.
In her new book, Single-Handedly: Contemporary Architects Draw by Hand, the New York architect and writer Nalina Moses, has collated some two hundred hand drawings by contemporary architects from around the world that have at least something of Mies’s power to stop us in our visual tracks. However slick and clever, computer drawings, she argues, cannot yet approach let alone match the “formal intelligence, assertive sensuality and emotional immediacy” of hand drawing. Where the former have proved to be largely indispensable in the construction process, they remain geometric constructions no matter how cleverly they are programmed. Hand drawings are constructs of the imagination.
![#](https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Peter-Wilson.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=187&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=210&s=c62385cd08fe0cb58549f002612c689c 210w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Peter-Wilson.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=373&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=420&s=c99391d93a727dc5a0e5e95fa4a3cfe9 420w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Peter-Wilson.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=682&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=768&s=3cc99d2a43a4ccb3d9039d0e2ba93525 768w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Peter-Wilson.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=910&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1024&s=d7a5fc845c1fa9ab34e74f5eafddeb2e 1024w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Peter-Wilson.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1244&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1400&s=326cbab100548eb710f43202514acdb7 1400w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Peter-Wilson.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1421&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1600&s=4fface8dc06670b3bb4e8acb9f14b09e 1600w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Peter-Wilson.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1706&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1920&s=d02b5ad67f5a1fa4f883fb3deb436a09 1920w)
![#](https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Anneke-Vervoort.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=283&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=210&s=02d992d78511c932e973c4c6878248bd 210w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Anneke-Vervoort.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=566&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=420&s=9681246f8ac70523ba5b08e1e7db74aa 420w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Anneke-Vervoort.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1035&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=768&s=512d794400c27d97689bea73d53c707a 768w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Anneke-Vervoort.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1380&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1024&s=8b7b19e73cfe8f9fb6fc5b046125834f 1024w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Anneke-Vervoort.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1887&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1400&s=a84888caaf5b5c716476f14476d4873f 1400w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Anneke-Vervoort.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2156&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1600&s=3eb55a49668515cf4ecec697be6548f8 1600w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Anneke-Vervoort.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2588&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1920&s=e371f18025219eb40d36e2cd8699f728 1920w)
“A hand drawing”, writes Moses, “because it is linked to centuries-old traditions of picture-making, has a powerful imagistic potential”. Unmediated, it can also “move as swiftly as a stream of thought” while “setting the architect at the center of a building’s mythology”. And, for Moses, summing up the rich catalogue of entries to her book, hand drawing returns the building to an organically conceived, yet freely formed, whole. “The empty page is an unregulated space, a field with infinite imaginative potential. It makes possible all architectures, whether rigidly pragmatic, unquestioningly traditional, or disruptively innovative.”
Any architect wondering if they should put their head above the CAD parapet and show their ability to draw and to think about architecture and individual buildings through hand drawing, might want to turn the pages of Single-Handedly to witness the sheer range of techniques and styles and ways of seeing through the hand their peers from the around the world are capable of.
The book is also a reminder of what to look for in drawings. As Moses notes of the many beautiful drawings that came her way while compiling her book, “Of these some also possessed an expressive energy” – as, of course, did Mies’s Friedrichstrasse competition drawings – “as if they needed to be drawn. It was these, whether rendered in pencil, acrylic paint, coffee, ink or correction fluid, if not charcoal, that made their way into the book.
![#](https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Denis-Andernach.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=292&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=210&s=b184089db166e51597fb5fb040b79caf 210w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Denis-Andernach.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=583&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=420&s=e62da5cefd4b987322e4ea7a360326df 420w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Denis-Andernach.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1067&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=768&s=dc35f4b07dcd137b210562c5054a2953 768w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Denis-Andernach.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1423&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1024&s=4538809107595910d1bae4835f6eab5f 1024w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Denis-Andernach.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1945&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1400&s=513d5885983008ac141e19eb1b3669c1 1400w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Denis-Andernach.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2223&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1600&s=f88ea1181cd546a61c2680501dc1f669 1600w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Denis-Andernach.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2667&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1920&s=bea019ee40391a2d4c8556e1bd7b0df6 1920w)
Single-Handedly
Contemporary Architects Draw by Hand
Nalina Moses; foreword by Tom Kundig
ISBN: 978-1-61689-726-0
8 X 10 IN / 256 PP / 220 COLOUR IMAGES
£35.00 / HARDCOVER
Princeton University Press
PUBLICATION DATE: 7 MAY 2019
![#](https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Stefan-Davidovici.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=297&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=210&s=04ec9c3fe44ea0ebb62bdc39da53158c 210w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Stefan-Davidovici.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=594&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=420&s=cd9a3a41d9b8d9845718972962970be5 420w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Stefan-Davidovici.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1086&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=768&s=073e167f24beff8e8472404931bc7649 768w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Stefan-Davidovici.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1449&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1024&s=9b6b8c04d4f632dc1059b4fa794890ff 1024w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Stefan-Davidovici.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1981&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1400&s=d67b069052e77e4d85fd9000ae4cc545 1400w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Stefan-Davidovici.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2263&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1600&s=98409af6f1578734d8d524df5405c601 1600w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2FJG-Stefan-Davidovici.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=2716&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1920&s=6d82588917156611a3b2a2a962cdfa61 1920w)
This article was originally published on ArchDaily.
It forms part of our series on The Architecture Drawing Prize: an open drawing competition curated by Make, WAF and Sir John Soane’s Museum to highlight the importance of drawing in architecture. The competition is now closed and winners will be announced soon. Sponsored by William Hare Group.