Pyo Mi-young
Architectural Diagrams
Construction and Design Manual
One strip of images shows a house rising up into the air, to land in a sunny spot by the sea. Another shows people interacting in a room that resembles a floating iceberg rather than a work of architecture. It seems incredible, but these images have not sprung from a comic artist’s mind. Instead, they appear in a book about architecture or, to be precise, about architectural diagrams.
Rem Koolhaas perfected the diagram as an unconventional method of presenting designs and ideas, and the next generation of celebrated international architects went on refining it. Similar to comic strips or graphic novels, diagrams are a visual medium of communication. This makes them easy to understand even across linguistic and cultural boundaries and an ideal method of communicating ideas to clients. Today, architectural diagrams are no longer mere aids to explaining a design or reducing an idea to a simple outline, but have emerged as an art form of their own among the creative skills related to planning and building.
©: Moho Architects
The book Architectural Diagrams in the series Construction and Design Manuals brings together more than 1500 diagrams from a predominantly European avant-garde including UNStudio, JDS Architects (Jan de Smets), Périphériques, Jürgen Mayer H., LAVA, and BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group). In two volumes it offers an overview of the state of the art in architectural representation across a spectrum extending from simple arrow diagrams to sober graphs and highly elaborate, often somewhat surreal collages and computer animations which trigger a wide range of intellectual and emotional responses. Some diagrams even seem to meld with classic representational techniques such as drawings, models, or renderings.
Diagrams tell stories. Those able to read them can follow the process by which ideas and thoughts take visual shape, find aesthetic form and, if all goes well, become part of the built environment. Architecture can be as full of suspense as a graphic novel.
Pyo Mi Young
Architectural Diagrams
Construction and Design Manual
225 × 280 mm, 744 pages, approx. 1,500 illustrations
Softcover, 2 vols. in cardboard slipcase
Not available in Asia
2011
ISBN 978-3-86922-148-9 (English)
€ 78,00 (D) / 80,20 [A] / CHF 122,00
For ordering please contact the Publisher:
DOM publishers - www.dom-publishers.com
