During one of our sessions, the class was divided into two teams and each received multiple forms of architectural drawings. These pages consisted of floor plans, elevations, sectionals, and perspective drawings of different buildings. The objective was to observe the pages, sort them, and match them together with the right building. There was some competition between the teams, but I felt that competing was not the focus of the assignment. I found this assignment interesting; it involved looking for specific details from the floor plans and trying to match them with the elevations, sectionals, and perspective drawings. Some of the drawings had details that were easy to figure out, like the building with the dome structure on the roof. Other drawings were very similar in my eyes, but after having a discussion about how unique each building was, I could see the difference.  Overall, this assignment was insightful for me on how to read plans for buildings.

In another one of our sessions, we traveled to Wall Street to study Federal Hall. The building had a Greek Revival style and was impressive looking. The trip involved observing the exterior of the building, the lobby, the inner rooms, the stairs, and the basement. But before we started entering the rooms, we made a floor plan sketch of Federal Hall. This sketch started out as a large rectangle, but gradually became a plan through the use of guidelines and drawing in details such as the columns, stairs, and the back rooms.  To further our sketch, we traveled across the rooms and observed the structural elements. For the most part, the building was symmetrical and followed a consistent design internally and externally. It was appealing to see the different rooms Federal Hall had to offer.

Recently, we began constructing a floor plan of Federal Hall after studying the building’s interior and exterior features. This floor plan was a lot like the sketch we made during the Federal Hall trip but more meticulous. The drawing started out with a large rectangle. Using guidelines, the floor plan started to take shape. We began drawing subdivisions in the rectangle and used a compass to draw the lobby area. After drawing the exterior, we started making guidelines for the dimensions of the building. When drawing the Federal Hall floor plan, I was met with some difficulties, but that was most likely due to my lack of preparedness. Regardless, I am excited to see how well this floor plan will turn out and I expect to see improvement in my drawing skills as we continue.