What is the Architectural Technologist?
In the old days we used to have Architects and draughtsman. Traditionally the architect would design the details, often the details freehand, and then hand them off to the draughtsman who would then draw them accurately. I worked in an office where I was the architect and I would manually draft my details in pencil on grid paper and give those to my team to draw. In those days we used to use ink on tracing paper, and it would be a long process. You can’t draw the horizontal and vertical lines at the same time, you have to wait for the ink to dry. If you didn’t wait for them to dry, you could have smudges of ink all over the page.
When we moved to computer base training, the computers replaced the drawing board and the ink. So the architect would still freehand the details and the draughtsman would then translate that into the computer. And those days we used computers as electronic ink.
There has been a general change to the architectural technologist designing and drawing the details at the same time.
The draughtsman have become closer to Architects and the architects have become closer to draughtsman.
But the basic fundamentals of drawing are still the same. Good detailing, line weights, hatches, line styles, etc. These are still really important to communicate your design to the building control and the contractor. The drawings are not an end in themselves, they are how we communicate our design to other people who have to carry out the instructions. We have to use instructions that are clear. These basic drawing fundamentals are what makes our drawings and our intentions clear.