Above: Ariston, Antonio Caminiti, SLV.

Was a time not so long ago when drafting, architecture and engineering were all professions requiring substantial dexterity with your hands.

Plans, working drawings, concepts, all required technical drawing, sketching, ink pens, pencils, T-squares, gauges, protractors, drafting machines.

A good eye, even an ability to sketch rough plans back-to-front, were part and parcel of the game. Vanishing points, perspectives, reflections, shadows, lobster backs, isometric, axonometric projections, all the minutiae of working drawings – hard skills to hone and little wonder AutoCAD, Rhino, SketchUp and others have been embraced so extensively.

The realistic and colourful renders, the 3D fly-throughs, that have largely superseded the products of those erstwhile skills are sophisticated and engaging efforts, but it’s sad to see the days of hand-crafted plans, maps, cartography, fall to the wayside.

Geelong is lucky enough to have many of its built-form treasures, grand and vernacular, recorded in measured drawings, preserving for posterity both a lost trade and some exquisite architectural designs that might not be returning any time soon.

Most of these here can be sourced to a measured drawing competition conducted by the Gordon Institute in the 1980s and squirreled away with the State Library. Others you can find in all sorts of repositories; Deakin Uni’s Special Collection, the National Library, Melbourne and other unis, the Geelong Heritage Centre, public records, private collections …

 

St Paul’s Church, P. Whitehead, SLV; Fernshaw, Mark Grigsby, SLV.

Each of these properties has its own heritage story and unique place in the fabric of early Geelong. Many will be familiar landmarks – Corio Villa and Merchiston Hall, above Eastern Beach; Customs House, Wesley Church Manse and the charming Grecian cottage in town, Fernshaw on Western Beach, soaring Austin Hall at South Geelong, St Paul’s Church on Latrobe, Ariston on Pako.

Geelong has long known for its architectural and drafting education, via both Gordon TAFE and Deakin. And while illustration and measured drawing skills might have been all but superseded by contemporary CAD and sophisticated graphics, it is encouraging to the architecture fraternity still extolling the virtues of sketching as a tool for expressing ideas and concepts.

The inexorable march of AI no doubt augurs further change but with a little luck the artistic value of these old skills will be better appreciated in the future.

That is the old story, isn’t it? Great artists need to die before their work is properly recognised.

This story appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 19 May 2025.

Austin Hall, Dean Lewis, SLV