Carlos Diniz American, 1928-2001

Carlos Diniz (1928-2001) was arguably the last of the twentieth century's great architectural delineators to work in the tradition of the hand-drawn building perspective. Diniz was commissioned by architects and planners to portray sometimes quite rudimentary schemes as they might appear in final form. Faithful to the architect's design framework, Diniz was nonetheless charged with imagining these naked concepts in movement, color, and light in order to communicate the potential of these preliminary schemes to investors, to planning and review agencies, and to the general public though highly articulated publicity efforts. Diniz's drawings trace - and frequently in fact propose -- how many of the developments were to function; how they would be visually articulated and characterized; how their densities, siting and choreography were perceived; and how their social uses and patterns of occupancy were conceived. Focusing on the birds-eye view, and on spaces, vistas and movement between structures, the drawings trace - as no single architectural office archive could -- essential and surprisingly volatile patterns of development in Southern California.