Last month Jonas Berg gave a short talk to a group of architecture students about a habit that tends to surprise them: we still start every project with a drawing made only of lines. No colour, no shadows, no materials. The renders come later, from the same model, but the first thing a client sees is a plan, a section and an elevation on one sheet.
A line has to be decided
A rendered image can hide a lot. A wall can stay vague, a roof can be two things at once, and the picture still looks good. A line cannot. To draw a wall you must decide how thick it is, where it stands and what it carries. The section, with its cut drawn in brick red, forces the question of how the building meets the ground and what holds up the roof.
The Courtyard Housing sheet is a good example. Before it was ever a picture it was a drawing at 1:100, on which the access gallery, the stairs and the depth of every flat could be checked with a scale rule.
We still send clients a line drawing first. It is quiet, it is honest, and it keeps the conversation on the building rather than on the image of it.