Famous Architects

Drawings by designers have been employed to show that their method of sketching influenced how they looked at buildings, and hence how they designed new ones. This is particularly true of Charles Rennie Mackintosh whose sparse lines and large areas of unadorned wall planes lead directly to his modern designs. The drawings by Richard Norman Shaw, Mackintosh and others show also that the same subjects can be viewed in quite different ways, with obvious consequences for their approach to design. This is true not only of famous architects of earlier periods but of practicing designers today such as Richard Reid and Arup Associates.

Until fairly recently the sketchbook was the accepted accompaniment of all students of architecture or landscape, and of many interested tourists. In many ways Prince Charles maintains this honorable tradition. Before photography became more affordable and part of our visual culture, the sketch remained the means to record and analyze an interesting town, building, or piece of furniture. You have only to look at the sketchbooks of famous architects - from Robert Adam to Charles Rennie Mackintosh - to see how valued was the freehand sketch. Its use was often beyond that of mere record or pretty picture: invariably the sketch was the means of noting down a particular detail or type of composition that could be used when the right design commission came along.

It is remarkable how many buildings by famous architects exist in most European cities. Wherever you live, it should be possible to analyze a building of real worth. The examples given here are from Glasgow 's two great architects, together with sketchbook studies of Le Corbusier's Ronchamp Chapel and various buildings by Antonio Gaudi. Sketches of works by the latter are the result of visits to France and Spain specifically to experience, record and explore the works of these two fine European architects.

The importance of the Office of Works in the history of the English architectural profession cannot easily be over-emphasized. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it provided by far the greatest number of posts open to architects in the form of surveyorships and clerkships of the works. The most famous architects of the day sat on its Board, and it was through the agency of the King's Works that so many skilled master craftsmen became acquainted with the latest ideas in design and decoration - ideas which in due course they incorporated in buildings for their own private clients.