Eleven Exercises in the Art of Architectural Drawing ─ Slow Food for the Architect's Imagination

"Profound humanism is vividly evident on the pages of this book, humanism in two senses: a body of ancient and modern learning, and a philosophy of human existence. Each of Frascari's drawings and discussions sparkles with wit, acute insight, and humane wisdom. For architects and other readers who are concerned with our built environment it is a work that should be carefully studied and pleasurably savored." David Leatherbarrow, University of Pennsylvania, USA

"Woven among the poetic sketches of these eleven lessons is a simple but profound message. Drawing is an embodied act of imagination and a creative way of thinking. It is a metaphoric power that has seduced architects since the first fragment of a design idea was drawn with a stick in the sand. While architecture schools today scurry to add still another software to their visual media, Frascari reminds us that what is being lost is quite possibly the capacity of the architect to think." Harry Francis Mallgrave, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

"Like a good meal, this book offers a respite from the pace of contemporary architectural life, a thoughtfully prepared serving of eleven morsels to revive the imagination. It is a commonplace of the profession---architects don't build, they make representations of buildings---but this book shows just what a serious proposition that can be. The book offers eleven bite-size morsels for their travails, diverting exercises to help them recall why they became architects in the first place." William Braham, University of Pennsylvania, USA

"Reminding us of the fact that architects (for the most part) make architectural images rather than buildings, Frascari sets about re-establishing the embodied act of drawing as the primary locus of architectural thinking - providing an urgent corrective to the too-often uncritical adoption of ever more disembodied digital design technologies. The culinary master-metaphor offers up a rich diet of historical dishes, resulting in an intellectual banquet of almost Bacchanalian proportions." Jonathan Hale, University of Nottingham, UK

Marco Frascari is Professor of Architecture at Carleton University, Canada. He studied and worked with Carlo Scarpa at IUAV and received his PhD in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught for several years at the University of Pennsylvania, and as Visiting Professor at Columbia and Harvard. He then became a C. Truman Ward Professor of Architecture at Virginia Tech and is currently director of the David Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism in Ottawa, Canada.