Have a look at the top photograph below: notice anything unusual? There is a high rise building in the distance that appears three times in the photograph… although this could merely mean multiple generic modernist blocks on the East London horizon. The photographic image has been manipulated: it was stitched together in Photoshop and hence the image contains the impossibility of four vanishing points, hence our new ‘three tower estate’ in Bethnal Green visible from Keeling House. Architectural representation used to reside in drawing but today thanks to mobile devices what we understand as the drawing is changing: the architect is today as likely to draw with his camera than with any pen. Indeed thanks to such devices the ‘photographic elevational drawing’ is increasingly common in contemporary practice. WHAT_architecture calls this ‘full frontal fotodrawing’ (FFF) and this is a two step process.

• Step 1: capture images in the field. Requires reasonably rigorous ‘in situ’ positioning of the camera perpendicular to the drawing plane.
• Step 2: post-production image manipulation: use of photoshop etc for parallax correction

With deep full-frontal-fotodrawings, that is where the elevation has depth due to window reveals, loggias, vistas etc, the FFF will have multiple vanishing points. This is a digital by-product and is a departure from the historic rules of perspective as evident in say Piero della Francesco’s Flagellation of Christ, the world’s greatest small painting (1455-1460).

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