The examples I used are extreme regardless of the original designers race and nationality – and unless it’s part of the programming, I wouldn’t design to the extreme end of the scale. Prediction– if you can’t get a handle on scale and proportion, you are going to make for a bad architect (at least one that considers themselves a designer). One of the very most important skill sets a designer can have is their ability to visualize space and the things that occupy that space. This means having a good feeling when something is – or isn’t as is frequently the case – the right size. I think this is a skill that comes more naturally to some but even if it is something that you struggle with, there are all sorts of devices that have been developed to help designers determine how best to guide them in their creations … the Golden Section, the Modular, the Canons of Proportion, actually using a measuring tape … and on and on.

That is me standing on the roof of one of my projects a few years ago … the pained look on my face is there because I instinctively knew that this photo would one day be used to teach people a thing or two about scale figures … and I’m standing next to an 18 month old baby. The most famous Caryatids are the Caryatids of Erechtheion. The six sisters were "born" when their home, Erechtheion, was built on the Acropolis. The Caryatids proudly support the roof, gazing at the Parthenon with an ethereal look. All six of them look very similar, but on closer inspection, one will notice that each one is unique. Their juicy bodies seem to breathe under the folds of the veil, the shoulders are bare, their hair long and tied in a different manner for each elaborate hairstyle. Their legs are bent, they wear a simple Doric veil that forms folds between breasts and rolls effortlessly to the feet. They were painted on the surface, each one a different color which faded on the course of time. Before you go crazy on me for not considering that the different races and nationalities are different sizes than the examples I have given, please keep a few things in mind: How a person is blended into the images environment is obviously very important, and there are many tutorials (such as the three video below) that help you to do this. However it is the chose of person and the activities they are performing that really brings an image to life. Escalalatina -A growing collection of Latin American cutouts, with the objective to raise awareness in Latin communities, among architects, engineers, designers, artists, and developers, who are the main users of the projects they create.A second and slightly less precise method of measuring a drawing is via a scale bar (examples below). These effectively represent a printed scale rule, and therefore their measurement can be taken and translated to just about any measuring device that might be to hand. |Daily updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Plus occasional news. Dezeen Jobs Weekly For example a construction detail of a wall junction needs to be a much larger scale than a general section of the whole building. The wall detail might have a scale of 1:10 or 1:5, whereas the general section is likely to be 1:50 (in metric units) Figure A: That’s me – Bob Borson. I am 6′-1″, maybe a bit taller when I stand up straight but hunching over a drafting board for years has taken its toll. You may have heard the common term ‘to scale’, which for those that don’t know simply means that every component within a drawing or physical model is in the same proportion to one another, and is represented by one of the above common scales.

Figure B: some random child walking … looks a bit like a stroll to me, which might infer some level of confidence and familiarity with walking. I estimated that this child is approximately 37″ tall (or 5″ taller than our 18 month old baby). This would make this child around 3 years old.

Step 5: Mark a line 1’ from the cut edge and connect the lines. This is the approximate height of a person’s head. The scale figures were used for a competition where the core demographic matches the examples I list The size of the scalie we are making today is 1/8″ = 1’-0”. This means that 1/8″ on a scale (or ruler) is equal to 1’-0” in real life. The height of the scalie we will create today is 6′ tall. You can vary the height of a +/- 6″ to create an average height person. And the section needs to show the general arrangement of whole building, which requires a much larger part of the building but in much less detail. Initially, how to use a scale rule to measure drawings may seem overwhelming, and it’s also very likely that you will require more than one rule, as different rules have different scales.