Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays brings together eight of Robin Evans's most searching essays on architecture — tracing how drawing is not mere representation but a generative act, and how geometry, projection, and domestic space encode social meaning.
About This Book
Few architectural historians wrote with the precision and lateral intelligence of Robin Evans, and this anthology demonstrates why his work remains essential reading. Spanning two decades of thought — from 1970 to 1990 — these eight essays move across domestic space, building typology, modes of geometric projection, and the peculiar relationship between drawing and built form. The collection includes the celebrated essay on Mies van der Rohe's paradoxical symmetries, alongside other pieces first published in AA Files. This re-edition, the first in AA Publications' AA Documents series, adds a new introduction and an annotated bibliography by Richard Difford, providing context for Evans's continuing influence on architectural theory and history.
Key Features
- 160 pages of essay writing spanning architectural theory, history, geometry, and drawing practice
- New introduction and annotated bibliography by Richard Difford
- Includes 'Mies van der Rohe's Paradoxical Symmetries' and other essays originally published in AA Files
- Published by AA Publications, 1997
What You'll Discover
- How architectural drawing functions as a medium for generating ideas rather than simply recording them — a distinction Evans traces with care across multiple essays
- The relationship between domestic space and social organisation, examined through Evans's characteristically close reading of building types and their arrangements
- The role of geometry and modes of projection in shaping architectural thought, from plan and section to more complex representational systems
- Why Mies van der Rohe's handling of symmetry is paradoxical, and what that paradox reveals about modernism's relationship to classical order
About the Author
Robin Evans was an architectural historian and author of The Projective Cast, widely regarded as one of the most intellectually demanding works of architectural scholarship produced in the late twentieth century. The essays collected here were written over a twenty-year period beginning shortly after his graduation from the Architectural Association.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 160
- Dimensions: 297 x 245 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781907896972
- Publisher: AA Publications
- Publication Date: 1997
Perfect For: Architects, architectural historians, and design theorists interested in the philosophy of drawing, representation, and the intellectual foundations of twentieth-century architectural thought.