Perspective - One Point Perspective - Aerial

There is one other category of drawings that are one-point perspectives, that is the bird’s eye or aerial view. 

The illustration above shows both the basic technique of aerial views and the main reason it is rarely used. The basic technique is taking the building footprint and extruding it using a vanishing point that is the center of the earth. The downside of the technique is obvious: roofs are often boring… well, actually,extremely boring most of the time.

Of course anyone who has played the board game Clue knows that there is another use for the aerial view. A perspective view from above can give the layman an understandable idea of a proposed floor plan. This plan perspective by Al Lorenz is a good example of an information rich illustration.

 This is one hell of a short post, but quite truthfully there aren't a lot of these drawings out there. I did one long ago for the fun of it (lost now), but never had reason to do one for an actual project.

NOTE: These posts are NOT meant to be a tutorial on one-point perspective. There are plenty of websites that do that. I want to illustrate some of the interesting examples, and point out the major problems and opportunities out there. 

Other posts on Perspective:

Perspective- An Introduction

Perspective - One Point Perspective - History to Beaux Arts

Perspective - One Point Perspective - Exterior Elevations

Perspective - One Point Perspective - Interior Elevations

Perspective - One Point Perspective - Aerial

Perspective - One Point Perspective - Using a Diagonal Vanishing Point

Perspective - One Point Perspective - Distortions & Complications

Perspective - One Point Perspective - Portfolio & Comments

Perspective - Two Point Perspective - Distortions & Complications
Perspective - Three Point Perspective- Hand & CAD