This is the first textbook for architectural drawing with the
computer that is based on understanding how digital drawing
fundamentally differs from drawing with lead pencils on drafting
boards. "Cinemetrics: Architectural Drawing Today" demonstrates a
cinematically-inspired, cybernetically imaged, architectural
drawing system for thinking about architecture as embedded in
relationships within the world at large. It opens up the
possibility of inventing new ways of building as framing flowing
matter in order to live a philosophy of ?newness?. The authors, who
have for fifteen years collaborated in teaching architectural
students, link the architectural drawing text with research in the
expanded field of architecture, which includes neurology, biology,
ecology, physics, sustainability and philosophy. The book is
written in an accessible and direct tone. Providing both an
understanding of the visual perception behind drawing and practical
exercises, it is set to become the key text book on the subject at
both undergraduate and graduate level. It is highly illustrated
with black and white diagrams and drawings.Praise for Cinemetrics
Sulan Kolatan, Max Fisher Visiting Professor at University of
Michigan and Partner in KOL/MAC LLC, and William Mac Donald,
Professor and Chair of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design at
School of Architecture, Pratt Institute, and Partner in KOL/MAC
LLC:
'By progressively positioning their architectural research on
"digital drawing" as contemporary cultural practice, Brian Mc Grath
and Jean Gardner demonstrate not only a unique lateral intelligence
but ? to paraphrase George Lang's declaration that tradition is a
conspiracy often used to keep the future from happening-? ensure
that the future is happening.now. This daringly analytical book
precisely and effectively delineates heretofore hidden systems of
emergent relations between ideology, methodology, representation,
and production.?
Joan Ockman, Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the
Study of American Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation, Columbia University:
?With this engaging, mind-expanding, and original guide to
contemporary modalities of visualizing and representing
architecture, the authors usher the not-yet-initiated into the
digital design age.?
Mark Robbins, Dean and Professor, Syracuse University School of
Architecture
?"Cinemetrics" extends the parameters of representation by
drawing on aspects of media, film and video. This book is an
addition to the lineage of expanding the pictorial field - the Nude
Descending a Staircase meeting the battleship Potempkin. The
digital drawing methodology produces an explosive shattering of
architectural space and reflects the understanding of multiple
vantage points and the simultaneity of events in the manner of
postmodern literature and filmmakers such as Godard. These drawings
have the power to communicate as seductively as the moving image
how architecture, space, inhabitation, perception and experience
unfold over time. The book offers new ways to analyze space and
more importantly new ways of generating it.?
Professor Neil Spiller, Professor of Architecture and Digital
Theory, Vice Dean, Bartlett School of Architecture, University
College London:
?In a world of change, fluctuating points of view, duration and
virtuality, it is vital for designers to reassess the
representation of their work in new and non-orthogonal ways, This
book addresses this most fundamental of design questions and
explains various representational protocols for the designer at the
cusp of the twenty-first century. A must have book.?
Susan S Szenasy, Editor in Chief, "Metropolis Magazine"
?A new generation of architects and designers has turned form
the drafting table to computer drafting and design, seemingly
seamlessly and without much turmoil. But, in reality, a whole new
way of thinking about architecture has developed--the computer is
changing way designers see the physical world. "Cinemetrics:
Architectural Drawing Today" discusses the theory and practice of
design in the digital age.
Kim Tanzer, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
(ACSA) President 2007-08; Professor of Architect, University of
Florida
?Five hundred years from now architects may look at
"Cinemetrics" the way today's architects look at Alberti's "On
Painting"--as a critical point of disciplinary redirection. In
fact, if architecture is still being built 500 years from now it
may well be a result of the cognitive shift McGrath and Gardner
propose, asking us to ?lose perspective and find duration.? In the
process of laying out a concrete set of design strategies, this
book makes original connections between theory and ecology, science
and art, technology and touch.?
Karen Van Lengen
Dean and Edward E Elson Professor of School of Architecture,
University of Virginia:
?This is a serious and timely book that proposes new methods of
representation for designers working in the digital age. The
?moving drawing system? celebrates the designer as a
multidimensional thinker, a networked thinker, a flux conductor in
search of new relationships and possibilities for cultural and
environmental design. This book, with its stunning and
sophisticated visual documentation, is destined to be an essential
resource for the next generation of designers.?
Michael Weinstock, Academic Head and Master of Technical
Studies, Architectural Association School of Architecture: 'The
presentation of a drawing system based on a cinematic understanding
of the dynamics of architectural space is admirably clear, and the
system has the potential to generate new spaces.?