Drawing: The Motive Force of Architecture

It was leaning towards a philosofical book than a book of how to draw. Possibly my fault for not researching the book since it was on a school list.

Good book with great and exciting ideas and graphics.

To start with, let me clarify that this is not a book about architectural drawing. It is a book about rendering ideas visually using every type of media you can imagine. So for every example of a drawing there are about ten examples of paintings, models, and an abundance of the typical modern 3D models gone horribly wrong. Add to this Cook's inability to clearly state any point, and you have a pretty bad example of an architectural drawing book.Here's a quick example of the kind of twisted verbosity you'll have to wade through while reading this book:"If it is the recurrent thesis of this book that drawing - of every kind - is a motor that absorbs imagination and converts it into usable or transferable information or inspiration, thus self-consciousness is but another form of evaluation."Ignore the terrible structuring and obvious lack of logical thinking, and you get a statement about how drawing is a way to capture and transfer information. And this was one of Cook's attempts to clarify himself! You can only imagine how badly the rest of the book reads.I found that Cook's attempt is just an exercise in pretentious slog of the type you'd hear spewing from some theorist's mouth at a black-tie exhibit. There are comparatively few visual examples given for the volume of text, and some examples are profoundly worthwhile (Arthur Beresford Pite, Neil Denari, Hans Poelzig) while the vast majority simply are not.This is my second attempt at reading an Architectural Design (AD) series book and trying to make sense of it or find anything useful to take away from it. Both attempts have been failures. I have a third one coming, and I'm now starting to really worry about it.Recommended substitutes:Visual Notes for Architects and Designers by Norman Crowe and Paul LaseauArchitects' Sketchbooks by Will Jones and Narinder SagooThe first book is an excellent primer on the reasoning and methods behind visually rendering ideas and observations. The second book is a compendium of architectural renderings, mostly in crude form, showing the formation of ideas without letting the book's text get in the way. Go forth, learn, and be inspired. And if you want vacuous babble then there's plenty of that online, so there's no need to buy this book.

These wonderfully diverse and dynamic reproductions are not ‘architectural plans’ in the narrow sense to build from. This is not a textbook of the kind I lugged to my ‘technical drawing’ class in high school with my T-square and pencil case. Rather than a book about ‘how’ to draw, it’s a book about ‘why’ to draw – about the creative impulse expressing itself through the communication of form and space.The majority of these illustrations were created for competitions and exhibitions by architects, by and large, for known audiences of fellow architects. I didn’t learn this until well underway reading but it clarified the text itself - which reads like a gallery exhibition catalog, full of contemplation, exploring psychological and historical angles.The works are in various media spanning the spectrum of abstract and imaginary to classically representational. The freedom of expression and dynamism is palpable on every page and the variety of detail is staggering – I’ve spent literally hours staring at the illustrations alone and feel I’ve barely scratched the surface of their essence.While the majority of the renderings are ‘hand drawn’ there’s a fascinating discussion of the impact of technology on the creative architectural design process and examples of computer-generated works.If I have a criticism of the book it’s the size: at roughly 8 5/8” x 6 5/8”, ‘Drawing – The Motive Force of Architecture’ really cries out to be a coffee table-sized book, or at least an 11 ½” trade size. It’s just slightly larger than those Penguin World of Art books I used to collect – no matter how gorgeous the reproductions, it’s just difficult to lose yourself fully and drink in pictures that relatively small.Lastly, while the mention of Frank Lloyd Wright is sure to catch the eye of casual architecture buffs, Wright is really a stylistic outlier here and readers expecting such kinds of drawing may be disappointed. (A terrific book for fans of Wright’s drawing worth seeking out is ‘Frank Lloyd Wright - In the Realm of Ideas’).

I'm not an architect nor am I training to be one. I got this book because I like to draw, and I like to draw buildings, and I thought it would be interesting to see how an architect goes about drawing/creating the buildings that I might later see built and then draw myself. This book wasn't quite what I expected. I thought the drawings of the buildings would be more straightforward -- the buildings would look realistic, clean, simple, and like, well, buildings. But many of the drawing -- no most of the drawings in this book are very conceptual. I found it interesting.I understand what some of the other reviewers are saying about the language of the author. His voice as a writer doesn't speak to me much. The drawings are much more interesting than what he has to say about them, which are somewhat convoluted introductions without much substance. That's to me, anyway. Maybe if I were an architect or an architecture student, his words would have more relevance to me.The book is rather pricey for what it is. As you can likely see from the caption at the top of my review, I got this (for free) from amazon's vine program. I couldn't recommend that anyone pay $35 (or more) for it, at least not if that person is interested in the book for the same reasons I was.

Me a review! Oh no thanks. I wouldn't know what to say apart from the book contains so many colourful and beautiful pictures I might spoil if I read it.

Excellent

Duffy the same thing over and over again and in a my the first half of the day best thing to wme and I have love you so much wtoo up pow

Recommended to anyone interested in drawing/painting/illustration.

Great book, what to say more! Peter Cook is the grand master of Archigram, and he gives us great insights about architectural drawing, and a lot of interesting thoughts about this world. A lot of images, some of them well known, but others totally to discover. An amazing journey in what architectural drawing has been and what is becoming.