Inessential Colors

"Today, architectural plans and drawings are always signposted with colors: pink for poché, or exterior walls, yellow for certain interior elements, and blue for details and ornament. How and why did this practice begin? The craft of architectural drawing-plans, sections, and details-was originally developed during the Italian Renaissance under the influence of engravers. The results were correspondingly monochromatic, relying on representation through line and perspective. But in the 1800s, an influx of painters-turned-architects in Holland and Germany brought color into their designs. This innovation eventually spread throughout Europe, inspiring French architectural engineers to adopt a common color system in order to more clearly communicate their designs across the kingdom, and giving architects another tool with which to impress academic juries and the public. In this book, author Basile Baudez argues that color was not an essential feature of architectural drawing until Eur opean architects adopted a precise system of representation in response to political and artistic rivalry between countries, as well as the needs of public exhibitions. He shows that French engineers lear