n drawing was considered to be an end in itself where the two-dimensional work of art became detached from the three- dimensional architecture for which it was created. However, its artistry was a potential danger for Rudolph, too, and for any other talented presentation artist. The sheer quality of the presentation could seduce the creator into believing that the final building would be equally sensitive and captivating. This may, for instance, have sadly held true in cases where he applied his graphical dexterity to illustrate concrete and other tactile textures, when the material in practice could not be used with the same elegance and human feeling which went into the drawing.
Rudolph’s presentation techniques were incredibly detailed, notable for their precision and accuracy, and reminiscent in some respects of Victorian etchings. Every element in the building was illustrated, including furniture, landscaping and people, everything which was to be designed and part of the composition was depicted to allow the viewer to visualize the total effect of the newly designed environment. The texture, materials and finishes were also graphically represented, sometimes stylized, but included to give as realistic a feeling of the grain or the nature of the finishes as possible as these were, of course, very important to the characteristics of the building.
The technique of rendering appropriate to illustrate Rudolph’s designs also helped in his choice of material for the building. It was interesting that he drew the vertical grooved concrete finish on his 1970s buildings and explained that it looked right on the drawings. He used concrete and explored its different finishes, precast and in-situ with different exposed aggregate and shutter-board textures because he felt that it was a modern material and its plasticity gave him infinite flexibility in his dynamic designs. He said that he considered brick an alien material in the twentieth century (in spite of Wright’s extensive use of brick in most of his famous projects), and then had the honesty to admit that this might be because he found it difficult to draw.
Central to Rudolph’s philosophy as it matured was the design of spatial arrangements with the natural light controlled by the solid enclosures and the open voids and glazing between them. Because of these design preferences it was important that he developed a presentation technique to enable him to study and express the concept of space within his buildings; so that he could illustrate his schemes accurately in three dimensions. The laborious task of producing plans, elevations and sections did not properly convey the spatial atmosphere of a building to enable this important design issue to be investigated properly.
Rudolph developed the use of the single-point perspective constructed on a cross-section through the building and drawn in black and white to a large scale is his trademark presentation technique, of which he has become an undoubted master, specifiable to study the spatial qualities of his designs. It is a unique way to examine and illustrate the interior of a building and exceptional for an architect to discover an accurate graphic system expressly for this purpose. The dynamic view of the internal space, its functions and activities inside a building showing its construction, services, furniture and people, all illustrated proportionally to scale and then amplified with light, shadows and texture is the most realistic way of portraying the three dimensions of a building in two dimensions. There is no other modern architect who has used this technique so successfully or achieved such a consistently high standard of presentation to illustrate the spatial qualities in his projects. The meticulous concentration on detail of these manually produced drawings is astounding and now, in the age of computerized images, it is unlikely to be emulated again in the future – nor indeed will it need to be. The fine artistry, which was achieved in Victorian etchings for reproduction purposes, was in some ways parallel wit