Draw The Line
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday February 17, 2005
Decks and doors are easy, but stairs are a pain in the attic.
My father is an architect in Perth and I remember going to his office when I was a kid and being fascinated by the plastic templates he used for drawing different-sized doors, toilets, windows, etc. This was in the 1960s, decades before the evolution of computer drawing technology. Dad did everything by hand and those templates were there to help him - just like a tailor cutting around a pattern. My brother, also an architect, now draws with a program that, to my father, would have been like something out of a sci-fi novel. His 3-D models let clients see how their spaces will look when built. His futuristic world has not filtered down to me. The plans I receive to redraw for readers of Domain are much the same as those my father would have drawn for his clients back in the '60s. Some of these still come to me from architects' offices hand-drawn on bits of paper; others on disk or faxes. My job is to translate these plans into a format that a lay person can readily read and understand. I scan the original, tracing then simplifying it using a limited set of symbols: black lines for walls, black line with half a circle for a door, etc. In a way, it's an invisible task that I do, until, of course, I make a mistake. (Hey, I'm human.) Just omitting a two-millimetre cut in a black line on a drawing means that your beautiful, custom-designed ensuite has no door and is now a sealed cave, while forgetting those pesky flights of stairs could mean that getting off that second-floor deck becomes a two-storey plummet to the ground.When I do make a mistake, readers notice. It's as if they are in that room without a door or free-falling through space. I am a graphic artist, not an architect, and I wonder where these simple but clever universal symbols come from. A reader in France or Russia could pick up a copy of Domain and, without speaking a word of English, read my plan and also know that one room missing a door has trapped them. I wonder, also, how old these symbols are: did early cave dwellers compare their ensuites by scratching in the sand? Did the Romans compare double garages by chiselling in marble? I think plans, like the spade or the hammer, have not changed much over the centuries because they haven't needed to.But enough musing, deadline coming up and I have to finish plan no. 2678. Do I still like doing them? Yes ... and no. I love drawing decks: there's something really clean and crisp about them. I'm also fond of putting in the doors; folding doors are fun, too. Stone paths are satisfying (but only if I have had a good night's sleep). Pools and ponds are cool, too. What don't I like? Stairs. Stairs are a pain in the attic. They meander, they are fiddly, and I always leave them until last. I'm not that fond of garages, either.
© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald
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