Customer Reviews

Tools of the Imagination: Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

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Very good overview of the subject and very well illustrated. But the printed text, silver on a white page and the reverse, is very nearly illegible. You may go blind trying to read it.

That said, if you collect drawing instruments, you got to have it.

From March 5 through October 10, 2005, the National Building Museum presented an exhibition entitled "Tools of the Imagination". The exhibition contained countless drafting tools and consequentially created documents whose days have since past.

In essence, this exhibition and accompanying book document the romance between a creator (i.e. architect) and their tools to generate their subsequent creations.

"Tools of Imagination" reads as a romance novel for any architect, designer or drafter who once either used or knew of these antiquated tools. Beautiful pictures of pocket cased sets (composed of rulers, compasses, and ink sets) contrast sharply against VIZ-generated renderings and Gehry's CATIA-sculpted buildings between the covers. The contrast lends itself to document the development and refinement of the tool while also documenting the evolution of the architect's method of designing.

While the preface and the introduction to "Tools of Imagination" succeed in relegating the subject of the book about the intrigue and history of the 'tool', a further consideration may have been given to the question of representation within architecture as put forth by John Beckmann's "Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture" (collection) and Robin Evan's "Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays".

By not tapping into this discussion of the relevance of the tool to the mode of representation, "Tools of the Imagination" situates itself as a well-done exhibition publication without furthering to the discussion of how modes of representation may be observed.Tools of the Imagination: Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

Bought this book as a gift for my dad who has been a plumbing engineer for almost 30 years. As he flipped through the pages, he kept saying "oh, I remember this tool!" or "look at this, I haven't seen one of these in ages!" The book was well received and a definite must for all those engineering and drafting types because it gives them a chance to see how the technology has progressed.

As someone else mentioned in their review, the book looks nice, but the white on silver and silver on white isn't exactly practical. Can be very hard to read, especially with a glare on the page.