Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art

From detailed plans made for entirely practical purposes to impressionistic sketches that reveal experimentation and the elaboration of ideas, architects' drawings are the unseen metaphoric blueprints of the buildings they precede. Envisioning Architecture, the first in a series of three titles showcasing selected works from The Museum of Modern Art's superlative architecture and design collection, features a wide variety of drawings by great architects of the modern period, from early masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to contemporary practitioners including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and others. Revealing the range of aesthetic viewpoints in architecture since the late 19th century, these drawings also cumulatively trace the development of the field, almost incidentally making the crucial point that in this increasingly technological age, the age-old discipline of drawing is as vital and inventive as ever. The book opens with an exploration of the relatively brief history of collecting architectural drawings, whose practice dates back little farther than the 16th century.