Architects Draw  Sue Ferguson Gussow

 

After Sue Ferguson Gussow's "Architects Draw" had been sold out from its original publisher for several years, despite high demand, a group of peers initiated a reissue. In collaboration with the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York, the Architectural Publisher B has published a revised edition of the book, including new drawings and essays.

 

Gussow's book is widely used as a source of inspiration and a textbook in schools around the world. It encourages architects to maintain their drawing practices throughout their lives and reminds them that drawing is the best tool to connect the hand, the eye, and the mind.

Architects Draw includes more than twenty exercises that explore the most unexpected subjects to train the architect's eye, hand, and mind – bell peppers and seashells as housing; paper bags to reveal architectural planes; shoes to define volume and void; frames and windows to consider problems of measurement and scale; and trees to explore gesture and the interpenetration ofform and space – and is illustrated with more than two hundred inspirational student drawings and examples from postgraduate architectural practices.

 

Sue Gussow started at Cooper Union in 1970 and became the institution's first full-time female professor in 1981. She has been a professor emerita since 2003 and continues to teach freehand drawing. She has significantly influenced generations of architects.

 

Anne Romme, Associate Professor at the Institute of Architecture and Culture at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen and former student and colleague of Sue Gussow, along with Hayley Eber, the Acting Dean at Cooper Union, wrote the afterword for the newly edited book.