Sketches by Edwin Lutyens

Edwin Lutyens's wonderful fund of ideas and inventions were expressed not in speech but drawings. This book presents eighty of his original sketch designs, arranged in chronological order to cover the development of his careers. They allow us to understand his manner of working - how often a building was realised from the start in a small thumb-nail perspective - and show his ability to think and draw 'in the round', as an artist or sculptor might. This feeling for three-dimensional form enabled Lutyens to conceive the complex geometrical buildings and monuments of his late career - the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the great Memorials to the Missing in France and his monumental project for Liverpool Cathedral. The sketches also show his gift for drawing and painting in watercolour, which he probably inherited from his artist father, and his ability to project his imagination into the life his clients might lead in a building. . The drawings, which are all selected from the Lutyens Collection at the RIBA, also show his great unexecuted projects - the lost 'buildings on paper' - schemes like the Harriman House on the Hudson River near New York and the monumental design for Lucknow University in India. Such drawings give a validity to the preservation of architectural drawings as documents of unique importance. Margaret Richardson describes Lutyens's background and training, his drawings and office practice which enabled so many finely detailed buildings to be built. Each illustration is accompanied by an extensive caption describing the scheme.