![#](https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FThe-Conversion-of-the-Proconsul-c.1514-Raphael.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=159&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=210&s=97ba33b0cc730ca9dbd3c7bf9688117d 210w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FThe-Conversion-of-the-Proconsul-c.1514-Raphael.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=318&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=420&s=48f1949ee79e12ac57fee12091ba19b9 420w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FThe-Conversion-of-the-Proconsul-c.1514-Raphael.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=582&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=768&s=d11f827fd0066d4a753eb097517bae01 768w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FThe-Conversion-of-the-Proconsul-c.1514-Raphael.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=776&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1024&s=e38ad0d4bf0b744ac12294216a7e27c8 1024w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FThe-Conversion-of-the-Proconsul-c.1514-Raphael.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1060&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1400&s=e8f279e0760394f19b8c314a3913b6b3 1400w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FThe-Conversion-of-the-Proconsul-c.1514-Raphael.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1212&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1600&s=4553b6c7ed894ee71ec2059bd1cb415b 1600w,https://make-arch.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.makearchitects.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FThe-Conversion-of-the-Proconsul-c.1514-Raphael.jpg?auto=format&crop=center&fit=crop&h=1454&ixlib=php-1.2.1&w=1920&s=463f2991556640352b6b813d33766281 1920w)
The next generation, including Joseph Connors and Howard Burns, explored new ground, as second generations do. They put drawings centre stage and in so doing caused a historiographical revolution. Buildings, Guido continued, are evidence of the ‘winners’, not just of architectural competitions but of politics and power. Drawings open up more private and forgotten territories, the realm of speculative ideas and individual fantasies, which may give deeper and wider insights into the architectural psyche.
This also raises the issue of what makes a specifically architectural drawing, as opposed to a drawing for any other purpose. Here the discussion turned to Raphael and his letter to Pope Leo X of 1519, which was a plea to preserve Rome’s ancient monuments in the face of papal urban ambitions. Raphael has a reputation as the most confident and serene delineator of the Renaissance – though Waldemar Januszczak detects a thread of “restlessness and experiment” throughout his oeuvre in a Sunday Times review of the Ashmolean Museum exhibition of his drawings. In any event, Raphael is quite clear that “the way of drawing specific to the architect is different from that of the painter.”
Architectural drawings have to give accurate measurements, and are principally plans, sections and elevations. Raphael allows that perspective helps architects to “better imagine the whole building furnished with its ornaments,” but is firm that “this type of drawing . . . is the preserve of the painter.” It took the next generation, and in particular Palladio (who was 11 years old when Raphael wrote his letter), to free architectural drawings completely from perspective and depend entirely on orthogonal projections. The stage was set for the next 400 years of architectural drawing, and the flowering of the Beaux-Arts tradition.
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As that tradition has run its course and new digital technologies challenge anew the conventions of architectural drawing, the next generation of architects will no doubt explore the relationship between buildings and ideas still further.
This article 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 article originally appeared in The Architectural Review.