What’s a blueprint?
A few weeks ago, I published an article called, “A blueprint for Napa ….Downtowns”. In our office staff meeting, one of my project managers asked, with a smirk on her face,” what’s a blueprint?” In today's fast changing world, that has become more of a joke, lost in the archives of ancient technology. Architects and engineers, A&Es, have not used blueprints in maybe 70-80 years. It was a common method of reproduction of drawings created to tell a contractor how to build something. The process has changed dramatically in recent years but ironically, the method of reproducing construction diagrams may be going back to a similar process that built the early pyramids: making 3D models to illustrate constructability.
All architects and engineers are trying to do is to explain how to build something. We use lines and symbols. Words are symbols. Unlike attorneys, we prefer to use as few words or symbols as possible to convey an idea or design. Today, Architects and engineering drawings are becoming more words and symbols than lines in many cases. But historically, simple line work was all that was necessary to convey the concept. Of course, there had to be some kind of media.
I hope not to bore you with a little history. The ancient Egyptians drew buildings using a variety of tools and techniques. Representations of the buildings or drawings were made on papyrus or wood, often fabric, and even stone, terracotta and chalk on tomb walls, often in color to emphasize elements. Naturally, it was difficult to copy or distribute copies. They did create grid lines for proportions to layout a detail and they drew the scenes with red paint. The Egyptians were pretty good at surveying plans and site and their records appear to be very accurate. Interestingly, it was more common for them to create a model of the columns or temple spaces at small scales to use as prototypes for the real deal.
In ancient Greece, architects used wax tablets to create sketches that were then transferred to parchment paper for more permanent documentation. In the Middle Ages, architects used parchment with ink to draw their designs. Again, it was common to create 3D models in clay of how a building should look.
Cloth and eventually paper became common as urban construction became universal in the 1600s. Architects would painstakingly copy a drawing from one to another like Medieval monks. In the 1800s, architects and engineers began using linen, often called tracing cloth, for technical details and up until night World War ll it was the primary form of drawing media. In 1842 Sir John Herschel came up with the concept of a blueprint using a contact paper and ammonia as a reproduction technique to allow unlimited copies.
Blueprints remain the primary form of drawing reproduction up until the 1960s when “Xerox” created large size printable copies in vast large quantities for distribution. They were called “black lines” as is most of today’s printing. The process has not changed, although the name Xerox has disappeared.
What's also changed is the document sizes. After World War ll, drawings were huge, sometimes four foot by six foot and called ‘bed sheet’ drawings. The common size of printing today is two foot by three foot and now with new AutoCAD and BIM processing reproduction of construction drawings are getting smaller so as to reproduced on a conventional printer at 11 inches by 17 inches in in multi-page book form. The size of the drawings doesn't really matter, it's all a matter of conveying the construction concepts accurately.
The future is here now
The future of print reproduction is going to be holograms. Architects and engineers will be creating 3D images that can be rotated and viewed by contractors and public figures to understand what is to be created and built. HoloLamp is one of many innovative companies replacing paper and computer generated 2Ds for architects, real estate agents, engineers and urban planners. The portable device projects the illusion of 3D buildings directly on the table-top, with the capability to see the virtual buildings from all angles with the correct perspective. It also allows natural interactions with the user so that one can zoom in and out to see specific details, change the materials and manage 3D assets by simply gesturing his hands.
While this is available now, it will take eons to change an industry that has been using sheets of papyrus or paper for thousands of years. But then again, computer generated documents only took 40 years to change the A&E process, so we’ll see. Stay tuned.
Chris d Craiker AIA/NCARB still uses a pencil and crayons to draw 3D images.
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