sandr037

John C. Wenrich (1894 – 1970) is one of the more obscure greats in architectural rendering. There is no book covering his life, and his rendering work is limited and scattered. In spite of this, the sense of atmosphere that he imbued into pencil and watercolor is unsurpassed. No survey of early 20 th century architecture is complete without noting his contribution. He was born in Maryland, the son of a locomotive engineer (Whistler had similar parentage), and worked for a local architect before enrolling at the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute (RAMI) in Rochester, New York. Being drawn to art, he went to New York City to study at the Art Students League, and after serving in France during World War I, spent 5 months at the University of Toulouse. Returning from Europe, he joined the firm of Gordon and Kaelber Architects as an illustrator, staying there until 1931.  Oddly, it was during the Great Depression that his career took off. In 1930 he did renderings for the Cen...

The oldest pictures made by humans are primitive stick figures with no attempt to represent three dimensions.  But over time, cave paintings became more realistic, suggesting different materials, and modeling forms with shading.  Over the centuries artists have tried to capture three dimensional realities on a flat surface (Carl Larsson’s Autumn ) The gold standard of art was to fool the viewer into thinking that what he was looking at was 3D reality; a standard achieved by Rembrandt Peale in this self portrait . Seeing reality emerging from a plain sheet of paper is one aspect of artistic magic. It is what makes figure drawing so gratifying for me. …But I really want to talk about Architecture and Architectural drawing. A building plan has no need to aspire to illusion. It is a diagram which anyone can understand; like a map or the squares on a child’s game board. But, the actual building is often much more complicated. At the very least, architects try to distinguish materi...

Over the years I have created quite a few one point perspectives. The following are samples of layouts, both hand and computer generated. Some illustrate an aspect of layout work, but most are simply here to show the range of projects that accommodate one point views.  This layout from the 1980’s shows a pedestrian way through the Harper and Row Headquarters Building in Manhattan. It is essentially an elevation with steps in the foreground, and a rectangular passage receding geometrically into the distance. It could have been worked out using a diagonal vanishing point alone, but was actually constructed from a measured plan which can be seem in light pencil under the passageway itself. The most difficult part was the lettering on the cylinder to the left of the opening, which was worked out by eye. This view of an office hallway at the General Reinsurance Headquarters in Manhattan was typical for sketches in the ‘80s. The plan can be seen at the bottom of the column, and the pict...