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Questions about Typography of Architecture
2006.03.30 08:10

Susan, regarding drafting conventions, the 'architecture' font probably has it's 'origin' somewhere before the middle of the last century. I say this because it doesn't seem to be directly related to beaux-arts conventions, but does appear to have a relation to FLWright's lettering 'style'. It's prevalence within architecture may be the result of WWII engineering standardization--remember, construction documents are legal documents, thus ambiguity is not exactly desired in any of its aspects. Frank Ching merely complied with the convention that was already well in place. Also, Leroy lettering, which was very standardized via templates, was an architectural font standard up until the 1970s/early 1980s. Then there's also Lettreset and then Kroy, and then CAD.

I just looked at a "working drawing" from Le Corbusier's office from 1935 and the lettering there is not quite the "architecture"/tekton font; it is more like the "din" (I think that's the name) font, which was European as opposed to American.

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