Drawing Method of Auguste Choisy


One of the common type of drawings that I normally use is Isometric drawing.  I often use this type of drawing to review three dimensional aspects of my design or constructional aspect of architecture. I also use Isometric drawing  when I design furniture for my wood working practice. The drawing offers a unique point of observation.  Most of my Isometric drawings will be visualized from the bird’s – eye view that allows the viewer to see the object from above. It is useful when utilizing this type of drawing to appropriate task in design precesses. Particularly for my object design (Wood furniture design) because it allows me to exhibit the entire elements of an object , and an Isometric also allowed me to implement scale directly into a drawing.

However when it comes to architectural design, I confronted the difficulty to visualize interior spaces  thorough bird’s -eye view isometric drawings because the view point is not related to regular level of human perception. I recently came across the book by Auguste Choisy called “ Historie de l’ architecture”.  Besides the content, the book depicted marvelous drawings in various types. One of those were Isometrics and cutaway drawings ,but instead of using bird’s -eye view technique, Choisy selected a worm’s – eye view to convey his point of architectural observations. Choisy’s drawings allow viewers to visualize quality of interior spaces over exterior of architecture. I personally think this drawing method is profoundly constructive in architectural design. Particularly when we need to examine quality of interior spaces of our design. Since qualities of interior spaces is an essence of creating architecture, utilizing Choisy’s method of drawing could be an answer. As far as I can recall, Rafael Moneo Architect used this method of drawing in his project, National Museum of Roman Art as well.