'The Draughtsman's Contract'

nerol

This isn't an overly serious topic, but I think it's worthy of discussion nevertheless.

I re-watched Peter Greenaway's 'The Draughtsman's Contract' last night. Despite simply being a great film for its dialogue, acting and visuals, it highlights a number of (mostly unfavourable) traits that architects and architectural drafts people are often accused of still today. Such things include the attitude, the attire and even the "trot". And on top of all that, it provides an insightful and powerful lesson on the nature of contractual agreements!

Does anyone else have any thoughts and/or opinions about the reflection of our profession in this film?

mark_melb

I think you may have misunderstood the meaning of the term 'draughtman' in the context of Peter Greenaway's film. I have seen the film a number of times and never connected the title with the Architecture and Drafting professions you are suggesting.

In the 17th century is was very common for the landed gentry to employ people to draw their property, houses, horses, wives..... at a fee. These people were the draughtsmen depicted in this film, not particularly connected to Architectural profession.

So the pise he was taking was of the artists, sculpters, decorators who seem able to convince some that things should be just so and seen as just that. Hence the use of the frame for the 12 drawings and of course the equal number of sexual favours.

Anyway, I don't expect parity, as the current drawing list for my present project runs to well over 1000 A0 sheets. As the work is being done on CAD, every man and his dog would be changing the initials in the 'DRAWN' space in the title block.