Architects' Sketchbooks - Tapa dura

Ultimately this book is loads of eye candy and inspiration for architects, just not the type we're used to seeing online and in magazines. Enthusiasts of architecture may find interest in the imagery, but the stunning level of diversity makes the book especially appealing for architects who can appreciate the sketches as a means towards completed buildings and as artistic expressions in their own right.--John Hill "A Daily Dose of Architecture "

A delightful substantiation of Frascari's ideas arrives in an anthology of sketches by 85 architects collected by Will Jones in The Architect's Sketchbook (Metropolis Books, 2011). Here's eye-candy as brain-candy; coffee-table book as a door into creative playground graffiti of a serious order. From the crazed comic designs conceived by M15 Arquitectos to the unnervingly precise and photo-realistic pencil drawings of interiors of Peter Clash, there's more invention and more humanism, more room for enticing puzzling, in these informal sketches than you'll find on a bookshelf of glossy architectural journals filled with BIM bling. A book for all ages, for professionals and the merely curious.--Norman Weinstein "ArchNewsNow "

Drawing by hand is making a big comeback. Tired of ubiquitous slick computer renderings that look the same the world over, architects are rediscovering the importance of this very basic, immediate medium: seeing the world and recasting it through their imagination and visual and manual skill. The resurgence of drawing is not merely a retrograde trend, but an affirmation of the continued importance of sketching as part of the design process. Architects' Sketchbooks is the first survey to present pages from the private sketchbooks of a wide international spectrum of architects, who use drawing to express their spatial ideas while revealing their unique thought processes. Sketches from some 85 architects and studios are featured, including Will Alsop, Architects Atelier Ryo Abe, Shigeru Ban, Elemental, Thom Faulders, Norman Foster, Carlos Jiménez, Alessandro Mendini and Office dA. Their works range from simple line drawings and clear perspectives to more abstract, artistic compositions, from quick freehand to measured mapping, from spontaneous squiggles on scrap paper to careful drawings on art paper. Accompanying texts by editor Will Jones include comments by the architects and profile how they use sketches to help evolve their initial inspirations and concepts into more developed ideas, revealing the artistry behind the built world.