Last updated 2026-09-09

Full set of drawings found here.

Overview

If you’re applying to architecture school for the first time, you are discouraged from making a portfolio full of building designs. You shouldn’t apply to a school with preconceptions about architectural design. Schools don’t want to unteach you; it’s too time-consuming. Instead, apply with the elements of architectural thinking. Meaning, how drawings, sculptures, paintings, garments, tech, etc. might relate to topics like space, materials, occupancy, observation, etc. In doing so, you will come up against the beginnings of design representation. Meaning, how to represent (show) a 3D object/space on a 2D sheet to clearly communicate something specific about that object/space. 

Design representation is a massive part of architectural education and practice, and it begins before architecture school as you make a portfolio of work for your applications. Any time you want to make a drawing or sculpture (or anything visual) to communicate an idea, you will use design representation. Even if you’re not really designing anything. For example, some life drawings are also a kind of design representation. Perhaps if the author is trying to communicate exactly how the design of a shoulder works, for instance. Or the tension in a calf muscle. Design representation even crops up in landscape painting, perhaps if you’re trying to communicate something specific about that landscape (an opening in a cliff, the slope of a hill, the colour of the ocean).

Within architectural design representation lives a range of types of architectural drawings. They are useful to know, so you can start to experiment with them outside of the designs of buildings, before architecture school. For example, if hockey is a favourite hobby of yours, how would you go about documenting the players on the pitch? What would be important to show, and how does this reflect in certain types of drawing?

How architects use design representation

The usual contenders are plans, sections, elevations, perspectives, and diagrams. But there are many more. Each type can be made in various ways to show various design aspects. Meaning, for an architect, a plan drawing might be used to show general arrangements, or it might be used to show surface textures of the flooring. This depends on how you choose to approach the plan drawing, but the overall idea will be a plan drawing (looking down from above with no perspectival distortion).

Full set of drawings found here.

Drawing practices and conventions change all the time and differ across architects and offices/studios/schools. Back in the 1970’s when there was essentially no 3D modelling software (no Rhino, no Blender, etc.), the rules of drawing were much more strict. Now we live in a world where anything goes as long as you can justify it. There are more 3D/2D hybrids than ever before. We have 3D BIM, screenshots of digital simulations, and much more. And as long as the recipient of the document is able to read it, and as long as the document is precise in what you want to show, then you’ve done well.

Design representation requires the author of the drawing to have a clear idea of exactly what it is they’re trying to communicate with their drawing. Again, that might be ‘how do I show floor textures really clearly in my plan drawing?’ And in addition to this, equally importantly, the author has to know who the recipient of the drawing will be. They might be your tutor, your client, your fire safety consultant, or even your mum or dad. You have to know who you’re communicating with otherwise there is no point in making a communication-document in the first place. Even if the drawing is just for the general public on a website, you still have to know. By knowing your recipient, you will save time and produce clearer work.

Ideally, you’ll make a list to go along with your drawings, crossing them off as you go and updating the list as needed. That way, your efficient drawings will become part of an efficient set of drawings, with clear relationships across. You could spend a month 3D modelling a high-rise block, or you could deduce that only four key drawings are needed to show the local council what your ideas are. Do the latter. 

Note: design representation is different to exploratory/investigative drawing/modelling. You are welcome to explore/investigate/play around in a sketchbook to test ideas before you get to this stage of careful communication.

Types

Plans

General arrangements of space, circulation (how an occupant might move around), relationships between outside and inside, topography, sightlines, MEP/HVAC, programming (how spaces are meant to be used according to a brief), how to construct the building cohesively. Essentially, more quantitative ideas.

Sections

How a space might feel, the scale of something, the relationship to the ground, the relationship to the sky, the experiential relationship to local buildings, the views, the levels, the textures or masses of materials, details to show performance. Essentially, more qualitative ideas (until you get to the smaller detailing scale, which can be more quantitative to show thermal performance or weatherproofing).

Elevations

The same as sections, minus the detailing to show building performance. Elevations are mainly used to show clear relationships to local context, or the overall image of something as it might appear in front of you.

Parallel Projection

Also called axonometric, isometric, dimetric, trimetric, cavalier, oblique…

Architects use the terms axonometric, isometric, dimetric, etc., commonly and interchangeably. Oftentimes they get them confused. What they mean is: a view of something that is 3D in appearance (not a plan or section) but also not perspectivally distorted (like a photograph). Instead of using these confusing terms, I suggest using the term parallel projection. Yes, plans and sections are also technically parallel projection, but they are never referred to in this way (they are referred to as ‘orthographics’ more commonly). Architects spin models around in their software using parallel projection, find a view that works for them, and then basically screenshot it to work on it further, perhaps in different software.

Parallel projection is used to accurately communicate the relationships between plans and sections, since it’s sort of a blend of both. They are useful for architects, but non-architects can find them confusing. They are generally good for showing relative scales of things across vast spaces. For instance, to show the perceived mass of a proposal within an urban context.

Parallel projection has a rich history, especially over the 1900s. If you’d like to learn more, read Stan Allen’s writing on John Hejduk’s 90 degree axonometrics (which are essentially 0 degree axonometrics), including Hejduk’s Diamond Houses. It’s an overlooked moment in recent architectural history, where the types of drawings used to design buildings have a direct agency in design itself. As in, Hejduk linked building proposals with their drawn language. Paving the way for further persuasive drawing types through to digital 3D modelling. It’s unfortunate that the precision of drawing classifications from Hejduk’s era are now considered superfluous to the profession, because thesse classifications have an enormous effect on the conception of architectural space.

Perspective

Perspective images are mainly photographs nowadays. Photographing existing things is easy to do. Using your phone to photograph something designed and built is a form of design representation. Photographing something that has been designed but not yet built is called rendering, and its done on the computer. Computer rendering tries to simulate the rules of perspectival distortion and optics. It can be convincing, which is why perspective renders are used by developers to sell their projects to leaseholders or buyers. Or by students to crystalise their projects to academics. They aim to photograph the proposal before it’s been built, to show exactly how something might look or feel. Of course this is abused regularly, and many renders instead are more fantastical in nature than pure photography. Perspective drawing is more rare than computer rendering. Frank Lloyd Wright did a lot of it. Nowadays, architects might make perspective drawings using 2D software or pencil lines on sheets if they don’t have the time to make a complex computer rendering. In doing so, the drawings can come across a lot like elevations since they lack the optical effects of render software.

Sketches

Sketches sit on the fence between explorations and representation. A sketch is often used to think through an idea. If presenting an idea to someone, sketches can be used, but they rely on the skill of their maker more so than any other form of design representation since the maker has to work fast and with clarity to communicate something specific. A sketch can show a plan, section, elevation, perspective, or hybrid. 

Collage

Think along the lines of Archigram, Superstudio or Hans Hollein. Collage has a similar use to perspective computer rendering. I.e, making an image that uses premade elements to convey the look or feel of a space. It’s usually a space that’s being communicated, and not an object, since its the collection of premade objects adjacent to eachother that forms the image, and the image is the space and relationships between those objects. Poor forms of computer renders are also collages. For instance, if an architect makes a computer render, but the render isn’t behaving how the architect would like (usually because of a design problem) then the architect might take that render into photoshop and mess around with it outside of optical simulations until it works. They might download textures and images from the internet and cut/paste them into place. In doing so, they would have made an image that does not accurately reflect the optical simulation of the space they designed. In that sense, collage is best used to show a caricatural idea of space, often in a lighthearted way.

Your own inventions and hyrbrids

As mentioned at the top, there are no right or wrong answers to this. As long as you know what you want to communicate, and who you want to communicate it to. Morphosis is a good example of a studio that worked in hybrids. Think along the lines of plans meeting sections, with a snippet of collage shown, to attempt to show spatial experience. In the case of Morphosis (an architect’s architect) they were attempting to show the nature of postmodernism in a drawn language, and the recipient was more academics. So in that sense, the drawings are good, but not in the usual sense of communicating clear aspects of designs. Instead, their hybrids served the ongoing discourse of architectural visual language. Long story short, if you’re making a hybrid and you’re not sure where it’s going, ask yourself if its better suited to represent ideas about drawing languages themselves, rather than to convince a recipient about your building proposal.

Full set of drawings found here.