Sketchbooks
by George Saumarez Smith
Triglyph Books, October 2021
Hardcover | 10 x 12-1/2 inches | 240 pages | English | ISBN: 9781916355439 | $55.00
PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
George Saumarez Smith, a director of ADAM Architecture, is celebrated for the elegance of his work as one of Britain’s foremost Classical architects. As a student at Edinburgh University, he belonged to the last year group to be taught the skill of measured drawing as part of the core syllabus and it would become a passion for him.
Sketchbooks: Collected Measured Drawings and Architectural Sketches presents a selection of the drawings that he has made in the last twenty-five years, in a series of sketchbooks each of which is named after one of the Roman Emperors.
The drawings display a supreme mastery that goes beyond technique and assumes the status of art. They constitute a series of concentrated observations on buildings from different parts of the world, which unlock the secrets of their design and give insight into the minds of their creators. Simply by applying pencil to paper, aided only by a ruler to measure the building in front of him, George pursues an adventure in the world of built form, whose aesthetic beauty will both amaze and delight.
George Saumarez Smith is one of the leading classical architects of his generation. George’s work has ranged in scale from new country houses and garden buildings to large housing schemes. [...] George has written several books on architecture and regularly teaches classicism at schools across Europe and North America. He is also known for producing large scale drawings, a selection of which formed the basis of the exhibition ‘Measure, Draw, Build’, held at the RIBA in October 2017.
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dDAB COMMENTARY:
On page eight of Sketchbooks, alongside George Saumarez Smith's introduction, titled "An Essay on Measured Drawings," is a photograph of the author (first spread, below) measuring "a doorcase in the courtyard of Palazzo Nicolaci Villadorata" in Sicily in 2011. The photo clearly captures Smith, an architect and principal at ADAM Architecture — "the leading practice specializing in Classical and Traditional architecture, and contextual urban design" — practicing a craft that was common but is now an anomaly. Simply put, measured drawings are just that: scale drawings of building elements that include precise measurements, a technique that enabled the classical tradition to be carried down from generation to generation. Smith admits he does "now very unusual" measured drawings as "a form of self-education" and inspiration for "other architects to rediscover the value of drawing and measuring by hand."
Opposite the photo of Smith in Sicily is a stack of fifteen Sennelier sketchbooks, each one inscribed with the name of a Roman emperor on the spine. There's Augustus, the name he gave his first sketchbook, in 1996 when he traveled around England with some friends, filling the sketchbook with measured plans and other drawings. Twenty-five years and fifteen sketchbooks/emperors later, Smith's tradition continues, regardless of other architects' preferences for modern over traditional architecture, for point cloud scanning and other digital technologies over laborious measuring by hand, or for photography over sketching to document a place. As such, flipping through the hundreds of pages of drawings scanned from Smith's sketchbooks is to be immersed in a thoroughly classical mindset.
Following the introduction that recounts the hows and whys of measured drawings, views into Smith's sketchbooks are organized into ten chapters (I to X, fittingly in Roman numerals) that correspond most often with elements of classical architecture: "The Orders: Capitals, Bases, Entablatures and Mouldings" (Chapter II); "Staircases and Balustrades" (Chapter IV); and "Geometric Patterns in Floors and Tiles" (Chapter VIII), among them. The last chapter, "Views of Buildings," presents perspectives and other drawings that cannot be called "measured" but are nevertheless carefully constructed and highly detailed. George Saumarez Smith is a skilled and patient draftsman, clearly spending a lot of time measuring and drawing buildings, but also making them look beautiful on the page. In most cases a detail is centered on a page, accompanied by dimensions and notes, but in other instances the drawings extend to fill two pages. Descriptions and locations of the places documented in the sketchbooks on display are listed at the start of each chapter, allowing the drawings themselves to sit as large as possible on the page, free of extraneous text.
Lovers of classical architecture will find a lot to appreciate in Smith's drawings, especially the ones where he spent even more time shading the details to give them depth. My eye, for some reason, gravitated to the layers of pencil evident in each drawing, particularly the lightest of the layers: the construction lines that architects use to structure their drawings — classical, modern, or otherwise — but never erase. Although it's safe to assume that many of those construction lines done with a hard lead were covered up by thicker lines done with a soft lead, the construction lines that remain exhibit the process of making. To me, these lines capture Smith in the act of drawing: an act that is joyful and meditative but also methodical and rational, belying the nature-inspired forms of the classicism that draws his attention.
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