This is a book of, and about, architectural drawings. The text discusses when to select which type of drawing but does not go far into practical techniques; all the illustrations show finished drawings. There is minimal coverage of computer-generated drawings. The emphasis is almost wholly on presentation drawings, ignoring working drawings used for actual building construction.

By contrast, the main inroad of CAD into architectural offices has been based on increased productivity for working drawings, often using CAD systems designed for general purpose engineering drawing. Does this book suggest other drawing tasks that are suitable for computer systems? Certainly the beautiful drawings we are shown are the product of countless hours of meticulous labor, much of which is entirely mechanical.

The text is organized in two sections. Section 1 contains three chapters on 2-D drawings (plan, section, and elevation), parallel projections, and perspectives. It is followed by four chapters covering color, collage, models, and presentations. The first chapter is fullest of architectural arcana, (for example, poché, contextual figure grounds, entourage, mosaique, and plan obliques), which are easily understood once defined. The second chapter also reveals a surprising variety of possibilities for drawing buildings; although a major attraction of parallel projections is their convenience for noncomputer drafting, they may in fact sometimes be preferable to perspectives. The drawings in the first two chapters are almost all in ruled ink--the artistic freehand only becomes prominent in the chapter on perspectives--and are therefore reproducible on a computer plotter. But could present-day architectural CAD systems generate them? It would require a combination of drafting and painting software, something more familiar in Macintosh-type graphics programs than in heavyweight CAD systems aimed at automated engineering drafting.

The importance of painting--image manipulation--is significant. The architectural drawing expresses much more than geometrical information, and architects use style and presentation to create images that also convey nongeometrical ideas. (Maybe this is a difference from the use of solid modeling in mechanical engineering.) Thus it is arguable that a more natural high-tech tool for the architect than present generation CAD is the zoom-photocopier. Its use is prominent in this book. I feel that working with computer files that generate images, which has advantages over manipulating the images directly, must eventually come to the fore with appropriate software tools.

This book is not about computers in architectural representation, but computer graphics or CAD specialists who want to understand more about architectural drawings (especially presentation drawings) could profit from this book, which will help them define the design objectives for future architectural CAD systems. However, architects who want to learn about the role of computers in architectural representation should look elsewhere.