Beautiful Drawings by the World’s Most Famous Architects

Here at Architectural Digest, we, of course, think that all architects are artists, working in a three-dimensional medium on a grand scale. But their artistry actually goes beyond their buildings—in fact, such skill is in play well before a cornerstone is laid. Architects are often accomplished draftsmen, some working in an exacting form with meticulous attention to detail, others choosing to put pen to paper in a more emotional, stylized manner. And across the duration of a project, they may even work in both styles. The new book Drawing Architecture (Phaidon, $80) is a collection of more than 250 works by some of the world’s best-known architects, from Michelangelo to Zaha Hadid. “Polished presentation drawings made to seduce clients, or for publication, sit alongside instructive diagrams and impromptu sketches communicating intense emotion,” writes author Helen Thomas in the introduction. “The diversity of the examples collected in this book shows that the definition of an architectural drawing encompasses many and varied approaches.” Take a look at ten of our favorite drawings from the book here, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Fallingwater and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s abstracted floor plan for a private home.

Frank Gehry used computer software to draw this image of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Gehry was an early adopter of computer technology; this was created in 1992.

Photo: Courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP

Zaha Hadid used colored pencil and paint to create this 1982 drawing of The Peak Leisure Club, a private club in Hong Kong. The project was never built, however, because it was impossible to do without computer-aided design—technology that didn’t exist yet.