The Use of Architectural Drawing Systems for Portuguese Buildings in Brazil Between the 17th and 19th Centuries

Abstract

Several Portuguese cultural elements played an important role in the colonization of Brazil, including language, religion, ethnicity, architecture, and urbanism. As for the architecture, its graphic representation has also a cultural interest. In this study, we aim to have a better understanding of the development of architectural drawings by analyzing some of the earliest graphic representations of Portuguese constructions in Brazil. The collection of research documents required for this work, part of the Manuscript Cartographic and Iconographic Collection of the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, includes architectural drawings produced between 1618 and 1822, when Brazil was under Portuguese rule. These documents were studied based on the use of three primary architectural pictorial systems: multiview drawings, paraline drawings, and perspective drawings. This approach made possible to identify some aspects of the development of architectural drawing in Brazil, highlighted the incorporation of cartographic elements, the persistence of some graphic attributes over time, and the gradual consolidation of a typical architectural drawing language. A close examination of these surviving examples allowed for the identification of both permanence and change that still resonate in the current characteristics of architectural drawing.