Architectural drawings and models are instruments of imagination, communication, and historical continuity. The role of drawings and models, and their ownership, placement, and authorship in a ubiquitous digital age deserve careful consideration. Expanding on the well-established discussion of the translation from drawings to buildings, this book fills a lacuna in current scholarship, questioning the significance of the lives of drawings and models after construction.

Including emerging, well-known, and world-renowned scholars in the fields of architectural history and theory and curatorial practices, the thirty-five contributions define recent research in four key areas:

• drawing sites/sites of knowledge construction: drawing, office, construction site;
• the afterlife of drawings and models: archiving, collecting, displaying, and exhibiting;
• tools of making: architectural representations and their apparatus over time; and
• the ethical responsibilities of collecting and archiving: authorship, ownership, copyrights, and rights to copy.

The research covers a wide range of geographies and delves into the practices of such architects as Sir John Soane, Superstudio, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wajiro Kon, Germán Samper Gnecco, A+PS, Mies van der Rohe, and Renzo Piano.