The primary conception of the work of an architect is that we draw. An architect who conceives a spatial and experiential environment in her head ultimately illustrates that internal vision as an externalized proposal. A two-dimensional drawing is a proposal's most ubiquitous manifestation. Until recently, the idea taught to architecture students was that those who illustrated ideas provocatively would be rewarded with architectural commissions. The most interesting exemplar of this ideal was the architectural competition.
The development of building information modeling (i.e. BIM) combined with ray-tracing visualization may have shifted the political dynamic of contemporary architectural practice.
The tools of the architect have largely remained the same over the history of the profession (Ortenberg 2010.) Significant technological changes in computer modeling have prompted contemporary architects to place less emphasis on drawing well (i.e. by hand) and to make more investment in technology.
The author believes that this resulted in an unnecessary (i.e. historically inconsistent) schism that has detrimentally stratified design processes, particularly with architectural students. Formal student designs inside the studio often seem a consequent of the BIM parametric, rather than a considered response of deliberate formal or experiential intention. Visionary practioners in the field of architectural illustration (e.g. Leggitt & ?) have proposed a balance between traditional hand drawing and digital imaging that has rendered artificial the stratification between design and drawing. The "tradigital" methods offer processes that move architects away from the ironic interpretation of the term "design drawing" toward the more sustainable vision of drawing as a means to design (i.e. Lockard 1977.)
Several practitioners have seemingly concluded that in order to illustrate designs effectively to clients firms should use computer-modeling technologies. Principals, project managers and project architects have often yielded illustration activities to a younger-generation designer who was educated in the time-intensive data-input skills (e.g. interns and recent graduates.) Architectural illustration has increasingly become the domain of outside subcontractors and in-house entry-level employees. One consequence of this disconnect between illustration and a firm's design leadership is a diminished perception of the significance of architectural illustration. Suppose that architects viewed models as only "one" step in a design process.
