February 15, 2011 — "Drawings: Analytical and Otherwise," an exhibit by Edward Ford, Vincent and Eleanor Shea Professor of Architecture, will be on display in the Dean's Gallery of Campbell Hall from Feb. 25 through May 27, weekdays from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

An opening reception and gallery talk will be held, in conjunction with the Arts Grounds Final Fridays event, on Feb. 25 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Ford employed a hybrid technology to produce the drawings included in the exhibit, combining meticulously hand-drawn, original ink-on-paper drawings of buildings with a series of digital photographs he had taken at exactly the same angles. The result is a series of exactly accurate representations of the featured buildings; the shadows are not estimated, they are exactly as pictured in Ford's photographs. The brick shown on the drawings is not a "fill" option in AutoCAD; it is exactly as pictured in Ford's photographs. As such, illustration and detail overlap in this new exhibit of 25 pieces. 

The drawings are drawn form Ford's third and fourth books, "Five Houses, Ten Details" (Princeton, 2009) and the forthcoming "The Architectural Detail" (Princeton, 2011).

Those from "Five Houses, Ten Details" are of Ford's own architectural design work. The analytical drawings from "The Architectural Detail" are of fragments of well-known buildings of the last century, which he discusses in the text.

"They are not, however, book illustrations, nor are the book or groups of drawings two separate projects," Ford said. "The word 'illustration' implies that the images of a book are the further explanation, the evidence perhaps, of the ideas that the text presents. In the case of books, I like to think it is the other way around: the illustrations are the point of origin; the text is the explanation, is what comes after and is secondary. Thus each image can stand on its own."