BERLIN.- The Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing’s newest exhibition is dedicated to the development of architectural representation in the United States of America in the 20th and 21st century.

The exhibition presents the hand-drawn worlds of prominent American architects and architectural draftsmen. The art of architectural representation in the USA, particularly at the beginning of the 20th century, reached heights of originality and perfection which still stand out today. The exhibition demonstrates the diversity of techniques used by leading architectural draftsmen, not only in the form of competition entries and drawings from realised projects but also as architectural fantasies.

On show will be works not only by such renowned architectural thinkers as Frank Lloyd Wright (1867– 1959) from his creative periods around 1910 and the 1950s, Richard Neutra (1892–1970) and Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012); but also masterworks by professional architectural draftsmen, particularly Hugh Ferriss (1889–1962), now celebrated far beyond the borders of the USA and Achilles Rizzoli (1896– 1981), virtually unknown until the 1990s, his groundbreaking fantasies from the 1930s were only discovered after his death.

The exhibition shows the influence which drawing style can have on formulating architectonic ideas and demonstrates the role which artistic expression plays on architectural presentation.

It is thus possible to recognise the connections between Hugh Ferriss’s fantasies, the cityscapes of New York and the commissioned work which he produced as a much sought-after draftsman for other architects. It is exciting to observe how the instantly recognisable drawing style which he developed in his high-rise fantasies - particularly well-known from the book, The Metropolis of Tomorrow published in 1929 - can be rediscovered in the commissioned works.

In contrast, the influence of Japanese architecture as well as Japanese coloured wood-cut prints can be seen in Frank Lloyd Wright’s early pen and ink drawings. These not only influenced his style of rendering but also nourished his architectural designs.

One can also see how the never-ending lines of Lebbeus Woods’s drafting style are carried over into his construction forms.

Architectural illustration has been particularly recognised from the 1980s to the present day in the United States: in the second half of the 1980s, leading architectural draftsmen founded the American Society of Architectural Perspectivists (today the American Society of Architectural Illustrators ASAI). This unique international organisation unites not only leading practitioners from the USA but is also open to foreign members. The society runs the annual Hugh Ferriss Memorial Prize for Architectural Drawing which is concluded with an exhibition of the best submitted works from the USA and the rest of the world. These entries were shown in Europe for the first time in 1994 in the AEDES gallery at Savigny Platz, Berlin. Today, the Tchoban Foundation presents exceptional works by contemporary architectural draftsmen, including Hugh Ferriss prize winners, Thomas Schaller, Paul Stevenson Oles and Gilbert Gorski. Also on view are works by Richard Ferrier, Steven Quevedo, James Wines, Scott Tulay, Gary Schuberth and Michael Sorkin, similarly renowned for their unmistakable drawing styles in the USA and beyond.

The exhibited works stem from private collections or are on loan from the artists themselves.