What is Architectural Sketching and What Are Its Origins?

Discover the history of architectural sketching from the 14th century to the post-digital era

Planning a functional and beautiful space begins with a sketch. All buildings, their elements, and often the landscape that contain them need to be drawn out. Architectural sketching is the first step for designers to communicate their ideas and vision—but how did this practice come about?

Fascinated by the history of architectural sketching, London-based architects behind the studio Bradley Van Der Straeten, George Bradley and Ewald Van Der Straeten (@bvdsarchitects), believe architecture has the power to transform people’s lives. At their studio, they specialize in residential designs, some of which have received several awards, including first place at 2021’s Don’t Move, Improve! Awards.

In their online course, Architectural Drawing: The Single-Point Perspective, they examine the evolution of architectural sketching, which we'll explore in this article.

What is architectural sketching?

Architects begin their projects with sketching. Drawing a building or some of its elements is not just an artistic endeavor. It often involves scaling, viewing from different angles, plans, and sections. It may include cross-referencing and annotations. And, of course, the use of perspective.

For George and Ewald, one of the most interesting facts about drawing perspective in the world of architecture and design is the fact that it had to be invented. "There's a period in time where it just didn't exist. People hadn't thought of how to represent spaces with actual depth," explains George. Until that moment, artists had not thought about representing spaces three-dimensionally, and there was no concept of perspective in drawings.

Let’s explore how architectural sketching and drawing in perspective began and how it evolved over the centuries.

The Middle Ages

In the 14th century, Italian artist Giotto was credited with developing the idea of a single and two-point perspective. His religious portraits and paintings in a church dedicated to St Francis of Assisi are the first recorded examples of adding depth to an image. Although, as George explains, he wasn’t accurate—the lines do not converge, and his single points were—he was a pioneer in creating a new concept.

Architectural sketching in the Renaissance

During the 15th and 16th centuries, architectural drawing became accurate. Ewald notes, "They elevated this technique to the mathematical world, where everything was becoming as precise as possible... That's reflected in the paintings of the Italian religious arts, and Dutch and Flemish paintings." It even started to influence how buildings and spaces were designed.

Italian architect Andrea Palladio is one of the most prominent Renaissance architects who designed beautiful houses and public buildings. One of his theaters has a fixed set with an exaggerated perspective. The stage is only four meters deep but gives the illusion of being a hundred meters long. Palladio masterfully transferred the then relatively-new concept of perspective—of objects getting smaller as they go further away—into a space.

Drawing feeling and emotion

According to George and Ewald, the next turning point in the history of architectural drawing is the addition of a layer of feeling and emotion to the technique in the 17th and 18th centuries. We start to see and feel light coming into that space, which transcends the mathematical and realistic and adds to the imaginative.

Sir Christopher Wren's drawings of St Paul’s Cathedral are representative of the overlay of emotion and feeling used in something purely technical.

Italian artist Piranesi also used perspective to generate emotion. A late Renaissance artist who used to produce pictures of the ruins of Rome for the tourism of his days, he portrayed Roman architecture in perspective on beautiful etchings.

However, alongside his commercial work, he also expressed his creativity in for his Carceri d’invenzione (Imaginary Prisons) where he used his inferences of Roman ruins to create imaginary places of pain and torture.

By using exaggerated light and perspective, George notes, "the perspective was creating these spaces that just seem to continue into the abyss and into nothing." Perspective is "taken to the extreme" to represent a never-ending space, almost betraying hell, by evoking emotions and fear.

Plans and perspectives

During the Beaux-Arts period in the 18th century, neoclassical French architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux "started implementing perspective drawing as a process coming from the plan," explains Ewald.

He designed an ideal city in France (the Saltworks) with all the buildings first laid out as a plan, then drawn in perspective. After visualizing his project, he would return to the plans to improve, refine, and add layers to the designs, pioneering a technique we still use today.

Le Corbusier

Swiss architect Le Corbusier needs no introductions, "he is one of the most important architects in modern time," says Ewald.

He still influences architects today and elevated the sketch to an art form, by suggesting how a space could be used and the feelings it would produce. His sketch for the iconic Villa Savoye (built in 1931) is a very good example of his designing process and how he broke down his projects into components, designing all the spaces in perspective.

By being able to visualize a space in 3D you can appreciate the space and the changes in the view, which would be impossible to explore without drawing in perspective.

The digital era

In the mid-20th century, during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, computer-aided drawing (CAD) came to the foreground, with popular software platforms like AutoCAD starting to take over from hand-drawing.

Through the '90s and noughties, big-name British architects like Norman Foster and Richard George Rogers were at the forefront of high-tech movements, "pushing this medium of the digital era." During this period, factors like competition and the need for public investment also pushed the demand for highly accurate digital renders of buildings (allowing people to envisage exactly what the design would look like early on), short-circuiting some of the hand-drawing and perspective drawing.

The post-digital era

The current era, benefitting from a mixture of media, is an exciting period for architectural sketching. Starting a sketch with traditional media, you can transfer your artwork to digital software, add to the drawing using a digital pen, and apply a different technique.

It's a process that reflects our engagement with those spaces, bringing emotion and feeling back into the drawing.

If you want to imagine and design playful, functional, and sustainable spaces, you can explore single-point perspective drawing in George and Ewald’s course Architectural Drawing: The Single-Point Perspective. They will give you the tools and knowledge you need to create fun, eye-catching interior design.

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