The Architecture Drawing Book: RIBA Collections

A Victorian club house in a castle in the West End of London, complete with battlements and turrets. A design for the post-war
reconstruction of the capital in 1945. A fantasy landscape featuring Le Corbusier’s Capriccio of Notre-Dame du Haut in ruins.

This is a treasury of architectural drawing from the 16th century to the present day. Exploring both how and why architects draw, it offers a rich visual history from Palladio, Inigo Jones and Augustus Pugin to Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid, via Sir Christopher Wren, George Gilbert Scott and Erno Goldfinger, and everything else in between.

From back-of-envelope concept sketches to painstaking pen-and-ink perspectives, exploded axonometrics and born-digital drawings, this book celebrates the full gamut of architectural representation. With over 200 lush, full-colour
reproductions, this is a window into the soul of architectural drawing over the past five hundred years.

Includes newly digitised, never-seen-before material from the RIBA Collections, one of the largest architectural archives in the world.
Explores rare drawings and designs from John Nash, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Frank Lloyd Wright and many more.
Insightful commentary alongside each drawing
ensures that each image is as accessible and engaging as possible.
Wide-ranging in scope, this book will both inspire
and inform.

Author Biography

The RIBA Collections

One of the largest and most diverse architectural archives in the world, the collection ranges from 15th century books and drawings to photographs documenting architecture around the world today. With a global scope and rich historical detail, it brings together over four million objects in a broad range of media through a shared narrative that describes how buildings, communities and civilisations are designed and constructed.

Charles Hind is Chief Curator and H.J. Heinz Curator of Drawings at the RIBA. His areas of specialty are Andrea Palladio and British architecture of the 17th to early 20th centuries. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Visiting Fellow at the Centro Palladio, Vicenza.

Fiona Orsini is a Curator of the Drawings & Archives Collection at the RIBA. Her areas of interest include art deco and mid-century architecture and design.

Susan Pugh is a Curator of the Drawings & Archives Collections at the RIBA. She specialises in 19th century British architecture.