The plan tells you how a building is organised. The section tells you how it feels. It is the drawing that shows ceiling heights, how light drops into a room, where the ground sits and how people move between levels, and a good one can carry a whole crit on its own. That is also why a weak section shows up so quickly on a presentation board.
This guide is the sibling of our site plan architecture examples and 15 floor plan graphic styles. Here we look at 14 distinct architectural section drawing styles, each anchored to a published project you can look up, with practical notes on how to recreate the look in your own work.
1. The Inhabited, Annotated Section
Natura Futura and Ancestra’s longitudinal section of La Colmena, a small multi-family housing project in Durán, Ecuador, is crowded with life: people cooking, reading and talking, pot plants on every ledge, and every courtyard and terrace labelled. It shows the building as social infrastructure, which was the whole brief.
How to recreate it
- Draw figures doing specific things (cooking, sitting, hanging washing) rather than just standing.
- Place labels above the drawing with short leaders and a consistent text size.
- Keep the linework uniform so the activity, not the rendering, gives it character.
2. The Rendered Sectional Perspective
O’Donnell + Tuomey’s library sectional perspective for the Central European University in Budapest slices through a stack of reading rooms and pulls the viewer into the depth of the building. The cut is clean and white, while the space beyond is rendered with timber, shelving and dozens of figures, so you read the structure and the atmosphere in the same glance.
How to recreate it
- Set a section plane or clipping box in your model (SketchUp, Rhino or Revit) and use a one-point perspective camera placed square to the cut.
- Keep the cut face flat white or a single light grey so it reads as the “slice”.
- Put your rendering effort into the space behind the cut, not the cut itself.
3. The Hand-Sketched Section
RA!’s sketch section of Wabi Residences, a terraced housing complex in the jungle near Tulum, Mexico, is drawn freehand in pencil with soft green coloured pencil for the planting that spills over every level. It is precise enough to read the levels, loose enough to feel like a ruin being reclaimed by forest, which matches the project’s idea.
How to recreate it
- Print a faint CAD section as an underlay and sketch over it on tracing paper.
- Use a soft pencil (2B) for the cut and a harder one (H) for the background.
- Add colour sparingly, only to the element that carries the story.
4. The Line-Weight-Only Section
Bark Design Architects’ section of Sunrise Studio, a small treehouse-like dwelling in the Noosa hinterland, uses nothing but line. No fills, no colour: the cut is drawn heavier, the furniture and joinery lighter, and the surrounding trees are outlined in the faintest weight of all. It feels calm and confident, and it proves that hierarchy does most of the work in a section.
How to recreate it
- Use three or four pen weights only, for example 0.50 mm for the cut, 0.25 mm for elements beyond, 0.13 mm for landscape and 0.09 mm for texture.
- Draw trees as outlines rather than filled blobs so they frame the building without competing.
- Print a test at the final size; line weights that look fine on screen often vanish on paper.
5. The Section Model
A section does not have to be drawn. Studio Zhu-Pei’s white section model of the Yangliping Performing Arts Center in Dali, China, cuts the building open and photographs it in soft, low light, so the flowing roof and the spaces beneath read like a sectional perspective made of card.
How to recreate it
- Build the model in white card or foam board and leave the cut face exposed.
- Photograph it square-on with a single soft light source from one side to bring out depth.
- Add a few scale figures; even unpainted ones make the space instantly readable.
6. The Poché Section
Poché is the old Beaux-Arts habit of filling the cut solid so the mass of a building reads instantly. Grafton Architects and Shell Arquitectos’ sections of UTEC in Lima, the campus they describe as a “man-made cliff”, use flat grey mass, a near-black ground and lighter tones for spaces beyond. The concrete terraces and voids become legible from across the room.
How to recreate it
- Fill everything the plane cuts in one solid tone; resist the urge to hatch it.
- Make the ground the darkest value on the sheet so the building “sits”.
- Use two lighter greys for depth beyond, the lightest for the furthest surfaces.
7. The Long Landscape Section
Some projects only make sense when you see the ground. Kerstin Thompson Architects’ section of Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales runs the full length of the site, showing the art museum tucked into the hillside and the bridge building spanning the gully. The building almost disappears into the topography, which is precisely the point.
How to recreate it
- Extend the section well past the building, at least to the next landform or road.
- Draw the ground line with real survey data rather than a guess.
- Use a very long, thin format; landscape sections often work best as a strip across the top or bottom of a board.
8. The Axonometric Section
guga Urban Architecture’s axonometric section of Knock Knock Heon, a house on the edge of Seoul arranged around two madang courtyards, cuts the building and then tilts it into parallel projection. You get the true dimensions of a section with the spatial understanding of an axo, plus neat leader-line annotations for each room.
How to recreate it
- Cut your model with a section plane, then export a parallel-projection view (Rhino Make2D or SketchUp parallel projection).
- Pick a steep angle so floor plates read clearly without hiding the walls.
- Keep annotations outside the drawing, connected by fine leaders.
9. The Exploded Section
Morphogenesis pulled the floor plates of the Zydus headquarters in Ahmedabad apart vertically, with the sectional cut visible on each layer, the light wells picked out in colour and the facade set alongside. Exploding a section lets you explain how light, courts and structure stack without one floor hiding the next.
How to recreate it
- Separate each level into its own layer or group and move them up by equal distances.
- Draw faint vertical dashed lines to show how the pieces reassemble.
- Highlight one system (light wells, cores, planting) in colour so the story stays focused.
10. The Typographic Programme Section
OMA’s “legibility section” for the Seattle Central Library (with LMN) drops all architectural detail and fills the building’s profile with the names of what happens inside: books, headquarters, mixing chamber, parking. It is a diagram, but it is still a section, and it explains the stacked-platform concept faster than any rendered view could.
How to recreate it
- Trace your section outline and floor plates only.
- Set programme names in a bold sans-serif, scaled to the floor area each one occupies.
- Limit yourself to one accent colour for the spaces you want the jury to notice.
11. The Climate Section
Kéré Architecture’s climate diagram for Lycée Schorge in Koudougou, Burkina Faso, cuts through a classroom and overlays the passive cooling strategy: cool air drawn in low, warm air rising through the vaulted ceiling and out under the raised roof. Red and blue arrows on a quiet line drawing do the talking.
How to recreate it
- Start with a pale, simplified base section so the arrows dominate.
- Use warm colours for heat and sun, cool colours for air and water, and keep it consistent across every diagram.
- Draw the sun angle for your actual latitude; in Australia, show the high summer and low winter sun.
12. The Watercolour Section
Steven Holl begins projects with small watercolours, and his 1993 watercolour-and-pencil study section for Kiasma in Helsinki is a lesson in how loose a section can be and still carry an idea. The curving roof and the light it lets in matter more than any dimension. Holl has said that watercolours leave “room for thought”, which is exactly what you want at concept stage.
How to recreate it
- Pencil the section lightly first, then lay washes from light to dark, letting each one dry.
- Leave the paper white where light enters; you cannot get that brightness back.
- Scan at 600 dpi and adjust levels before placing it on a digital board.
13. The Detailed Sectional Perspective
Atelier Bow-Wow’s book “Graphic Anatomy” presents 29 projects, including their own Nora House in Tokyo, as dense sectional perspectives. Construction details sit alongside bookshelves, furniture, everyday objects and people, all in the same fine line. Students have been copying these drawings for years, and for good reason: they show how a building is built and how it is lived in at once.
How to recreate it
- Work at a larger scale than usual (1:30 or 1:50) so construction layers can be drawn properly.
- Draw everything, including objects and clutter, in one line weight family.
- Budget the time: this style is slow, so reserve it for one hero drawing.
14. The Annotated Working Section
Glenn Murcutt developed the Simpson-Lee House at Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains through a single annotated hand-drafted 1:10 section of the east wall, reproduced by ArchitectureAU from the State Library of NSW collection. It is dry, notated and covered in specification, and it is beautiful because it is a working drawing: every line is there to solve a junction.
How to recreate it
- Draw at 1:10 and include every layer of the wall, roof and floor build-up.
- Write notes directly on the drawing in neat, consistent lettering.
- Redraw the same section as the design changes; the iterations are part of the presentation.
How to Choose the Right Section Style
Match the style to the job. Planning and technical reviews want line-weight or poché sections. Concept crits suit watercolour and sketch. Final boards usually need one hero drawing (a sectional perspective, axonometric section or detailed sectional perspective) supported by quieter diagrams. Whatever you pick, keep it consistent with your plans so the set reads as one family. For more inspiration across project types, browse the case studies on Archtene.
FAQ
What is an architectural section drawing?
It is a drawing of a building cut by an imaginary vertical plane. It shows what the plane slices through, such as walls, floors and roofs, plus what you would see beyond the cut, revealing heights, levels, structure and how spaces connect vertically.
What scale should a section drawing be?
Building sections are usually drawn at 1:100 or 1:50, wall sections at 1:20 and construction details at 1:10 or 1:5. Presentation sections can be any scale that fits the board, but always include a scale bar.
Where should I cut my section?
Cut through the most important spatial moment: a double-height space, the main stair, a courtyard or the point where the building meets the ground. Avoid cutting through columns or along a wall, which makes the drawing confusing.
What is the difference between a section and a sectional perspective?
A standard section is orthographic, so everything beyond the cut is projected flat. A sectional perspective adds a vanishing point behind the cut, giving depth and atmosphere while keeping the cut face measurable.
Conclusion
The best architectural section drawing is the one that tells your project’s story most directly. Sometimes that is three pen weights and a ground line; sometimes it is a watercolour or a white card model. Study the 14 examples above, borrow one technique at a time, and test it on your next crit. Your sections will start doing the explaining for you.
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