Evaluation of hand drawing in architectural design in the context of Pritzker Architecture Prizes

While drawing was initially used on cave walls to communicate, it has developed over time with various tools, from paper to pen, and has created art. Drawing is also at the basis of the art of architecture and enables architectural communication. In architecture, which has gone through similar historical processes, projects were initially produced only by hand drawing on paper, and then technical drawings were made with computer technologies, paving the way for digitalization. Today, designs are made with methods up to artificial intelligence. Despite all the developing technological possibilities, hand drawing remains one of the most important tools of design and production. Because thanks to the hand-eye brain coordination of human beings, the transfer of ideas is achieved in a natural way and technological possibilities cannot replace it yet. At the same time, hand drawings reflect the character of the designer and enable the emergence of projects with a soul, and therefore hand drawing is still used today as an integral part of design. In the history of architecture, project successes are registered through competitions. In this study, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, one of the most well-known and prestigious prizes in the world and considered as the Nobel Prize of architecture, will be examined. In this study, which aims to emphasize the importance of hand drawing in architecture, it is aimed to evaluate the winners of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Since 1979, this prize, which has been organized every year, has been deemed appropriate for the subject of the study in terms of its continuity. The Pritzker Prize is an prize that all citizens of the world can win and architects are evaluated not on the basis of a single work but on their career as a whole. In this way, examples from all over the world are seen and the works of architects from different cultures, geographies and technological processes are examined. Whether the architects in question are hand-drawn or not will be evaluated over their entire work rather than a single project. By analyzing the works of 47 prize-winning architects between 1979 and 2024, the case study method will be applied in the light of a proposed classification of architectural design process drawings covering the subject of the thesis. The hand drawings and projects of the winning architects will be accessed and visually analyzed. In this analysis, it will be understood whether the architects made hand drawings or not, as well as at which stages of their designs they made hand drawings, and as a result, the effect of hand drawing on their architectural success will be understood.