h Rudolph’s techniques because the latter, too, were evolved in this form to enable his illustrations to be reduced or sometimes enlarged and then reproduced. They were never in color, always in black and white, and usually in different grades of pen and ink drawings. This graphic technique was particularly subtle and sensitive. It allowed various line thicknesses to reflect the profile, texture and content. By using a different intensity of line Rudolph was able to indicate the relative distances between buildings, outlining the nearest with a wide line and the farthest away in a thin line. This tonal difference was also applied in the graphics, to indicate texture, finishes and shadows while also emphasizing depth and distance in a presentation.
As the size of projects increased so it became necessary to increase the size of the presentation drawings, hence some of these schemes were far too large to be produced by just one person. A team of people was sometimes engaged on one design drawing, all working to a predetermined graphic language to achieve uniformity. It was amusing to see four designers each working on one corner of a huge drawing board on the same drawing with two of them producing their work upside down, all conforming to an agreed set system of graphics and each producing cross-hatched lines! Several copy-printing techniques were employed to avoid laboriously reproducing repetitive components of these large projects. The original design drawing illustrating the megastructure schemes, such as the Graphic Arts Center in New York, has groups of buildings photocopied and stuck in place to avoid redrawing each identical component. As these drawings were usually produced on white paper or card, which did not tolerate mistakes or changes, these large presentation drawings had amendments glued on the master copy in a manner which resembled a patchwork quilt, This did not, however, matter because this was only a stage in the process of illustrating these major projects. Once the final large drawing had been completed, it was then photographically reduced in size and scale and mounted on to card. This produced a pristine drawing free of these original blemishes as well as, of course, creating the impression of a small meticulous drawing with impeccable details. It was important to know at the outset that the drawing would be reduced, and its resultant sizes, because the graphics had to take the ultimate effect into account. The cross-hatching had to be carefully controlled, for instance, and kept spaced out to prevent it closing up and forming a dense black mass as the lines gravitated together at the focal eye point at the very position where it should be thin and light to convey distance. These graphical systems were refined and improved to illustrate the building in the most appropriate manner. The single-point perspective through the main entrance atrium of the futuristic Burroughs Wellcome Headquarters, North Carolina, elegantly expresses this dynamic technique which was then replicated in its actual construction to create these same characteristics in the building itself.
Rudolph had a love of drawing. His industrious output of manual drawings was prodigious – he produced for instance at least eight different fully rendered isometrics of the Art and Architecture Building at Yale, each a work of art in itself. By producing such a detailed study of each scheme he was able at the same time to examine the virtues and weaknesses of each alternative design in a patient search for the most meaningful design solution for a particular project on its particular site. His evolution of the presentational techniques, which enabled him to illustrate and investigate the realities of his buildings, their spaces, texture and character, was developed in parallel with the evolution of his designs. He demonstrates in his art and his architecture the indisputable link between artistic dexterity and creative architectural design talent.
Rudolph refers in the publication of his architectural drawings to the psychological impact of