From Inception to Realization

Sketching like an architect

It’s always fascinating to watch an architect sketch his/her ideas on paper. I remember once a friend came home with reams of full-imperial handmade paper, pencils and started drawing horizontal and vertical lines in earnest. This sudden interest stemmed from the desire, to be able draw perspectives, like his architect friend. He was mesmerized by the fluidity and ease with which his architect colleague explained an idea through sketches.

Watching an architect sketch is like poetry in motion. You can see an entire building unfold in front of you in minutes.

What are architects thinking when they are sketching?

CEBRA Architects - Denmark

I think they are giving expression to the myriad images and ideas running wildly in their minds. Putting them on paper is like beginning to give them some logical form, like finding method in madness.

From personal experience, the moment I’m able to draw a design on paper, I’ve almost, always finalized details of that project in my mind. It may not be apparent immediately but when I refer to some old sketches I can see those elements scribbled somewhere on my notepad.

We architects, sketch to explore ideas. It’s a very intuitive process. We keep refining ideas but initial sketches serve as a prime point in our design process. Sometimes due to demands from clients, financial constraints or even structural limitations the design gets transformed. In such cases those initial sketches still manage to retain that spark, we can reclaim by rethinking our strategies. 

Sketch by Ralph Erskine

We draw to communicate our ideas to associates/students/clients, explain details to contractors and sometimes with the hope that when we become famous architects, these sketches will be published in our books. :-)

Architects draw sketches, not just to make buildings look good on paper but with the conviction that their ideas will take a physical form. They think about site conditions, weather, clients’ needs, their own design philosophy, daylight, social context and many more factors, albeit subconsciously when they’re designing/sketching. 

Louis Kahn once said, “an artist can make a cart with square wheels, but an architect can’t”[1]. Art doesn’t have to be functional but architecture has to be. Architects’ drawings have to make construction sense.

I love to see preliminary sketches drawn by famous architects to see how they envisioned buildings before actually constructing them. These sketches also give an insight into each architects’ thought process and the design philosophy they followed. Let’s see some examples.

Look at these sketches by Frank Gehry. His buildings are famous for it’s sculptural quality. It’s quite evident that he’s thinking about overall massing of this building. One can see how the form evolved.

Sketches courtesy Frank Gehry

Architect Tadao Ando loves to create drama with light and shadow in his building. These initial sketches of the ‘Church of the Light’ show study of how the light is going to behave in the building. The orange sketch shows light beams peeping through the cross slits in the wall and travelling on the floor and ceiling. The dark area in the colored sketch shows shadows while little kneeling figures show the proportions of the structure with respect to human body. Compare it with the actual photo and you know how he conceptualized this detail which is the focal point of this building.

Sketches by Tadao Ando and 'Church of the Light' photograph courtsey @Buou

Look at this beautiful example of sketches by Norman Foster for 30 St Mary Axe aka 'The Gherkin.' Like I said, an architect thinks about so many things while designing. Here you can see the thought process. He is not only thinking about the form of the building and the aerodynamic effect of the form but also about the social context of the building in a cityscape, various functions in that buildings, the kind of cladding he’s going to use, details of fixing glass, circulation patterns and many more things.

Notice how he shows a human figure at the base of the building to show reduced wind effect on people at the ground level. 

Sketches Courtesy Norman Foster

Architects’ endeavor to communicate  has resulted in some magnificent buildings. The hard work that goes into conceptualizing an idea and realizing it, is tremendous. But it’s the process that makes us tick, end product is for everyone else to enjoy.

On a lighter note, here’s a lovely cartoon from The New Yorker [2].

Published in The New Yorker 

References

[1] http://larryspeck.com/category/thinking/life-as-an-architect/

[2] http://publicreader.blogspot.in/2010_01_01_archive.html

Additional Bibliography

(1)http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/cebra_architects_to_design_information_portal_at_rebild_denmark

(2) http://docevecesdoce.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/151
(3) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18438604