Contextualisation

drawing has to the building’s immediate context. The ground is included, as is the street. These help to contextualise Moneo’s design decisions, we see how the basement is lit and access to it achieved, and how the exterior façade is angled to relate to the urban street-scape.11 Furthermore, the drawing bleeds to the edges of the paper, this is intentionally done to imply that the building exists beyond the confines of the page. Instead of acting as a tool for the dissection of specific qualities, here the axonometric drawing provides the viewer with the suggestion that

Enrique de Teresa’s Axonometric drawing for the Merida Museum.

This drawing was created before Allen’s, whilst aspects of the design were still being finalised the building continues, that tectonic and material structure are closely related with elements of the site and surrounding space.12

Allen states he believes this approach to the axo falls in line with Moneo’s realist approach to architecture. He is not interested in objectifying his design, and elevating it towards a form of dissected artistic expression, instead he highlights that the architecture is a response to things beyond the confines of the walls designed by the architect.13 Many of Moneo’s other projects feature existing buildings or historic structures, and he regularly chooses an axo, with the relevant context included, as a form of representation.

As a direct consequence of this, I felt too that my own initial axo, was too removed from the relevant context of the Cathedral, Seine, Crypts and surrounding urban landscape. That as my design was so closely intertwined with the cathedral, when making design decisions, I should always seek to represent Notre Dame and use that to inform decisions more strictly. Where, in the previous axo I had chosen relavent but arbitrary dimensions and locations for building elements, in my second attempt I tried to relate elements of my design