ASSIMILATE, FEEL, UNDERSTAND
Nowadays, drawing is not taught anymore in the Architectural schools. However, most of the Great Architects such as Norman Foster, Renzo Piano or Frank Gehry continue publishing their project’s sketches and drawings. After all, our profession will always turn around the drawing.
We are Architects, we Design buildings…
IDEO Boston manager, Michael Hendrix declares that drawing by intuition is not only sensitive, but it can lead to an evocative and a powerful work.
New scientific evidence confirms that is this intuition that determined whether a drawing is relevant or not.
UNCONSCIOUS ACTION?
Culturally, we tend to separate the mental from the physical, but embodied cognition teaches us that body and mind are in fact inseparable.
Humans manipulate chaos in order. Services become environments. We take what is unpleasant and disorganized and turn into something organized and pleasant. Despite being the responsible for these transformations, it is hard for us to find words that can express why these transformations worked. Therefore, the embodied cognition gives us, the designers, a powerful tool: the metaphor.
Drawing, above all, is subjective, an unconscious Act, which leads to true freedom. There are no geographical limitations to express ideas, no languages, no needs for translations…
When I am drawing, I am not selecting a tool on my computer, I am the one who draws a straight line that can lead to a new project and each new project involves a new story.
Therefore, drawing is subjective and personal.
DANS CES MURS VOUÉS AUX MERVEILLES
J’ACCUEILLE ET GARDE LES OUVRAGES
DE LA MAIN PRODIGIEUSE DE L’ARTISTE
ÉGALE ET RIVALE DE SA PENSÉE
L’UNE N’EST RIEN SANS L’AUTRE
Paul Valery, fronton du Palais de Chaillot.
THREE STATES OF DRAWING, from the artistic drawings to the shop drawing
- Gas State
Concept, sketch, idea, imagination, freedom, drawing a line that isn’t an exact line…
What are the tools, what are the needs? Finally, what is a notebook?
My personal feeling is that if my notebooks were computerized, it would be an external hard drive or a memory asset of my thoughts related to projects and different architectural situations, places, moments, experiences “carved” on paper for life.
If I forget it, I can always use a napkin or a piece of tablecloth or even a bag. Each one of them will end up in my notebook, the aim is to express the feelings, the sensations through a drawing.
Do I have some memories related to my notebook?
Sometime I have thought of submitting an entire project in sketch format. I think it would save a lot of time since the essence of many of my projects is found in my notebooks.
When I finish a meeting and I am abroad, I like to sit down on a bench and begin to draw my meeting’s memories, illustrate the feelings, the first sensations.
Without having to use a scanner or Wi-Fi, I usually send some photos from my notebook directly to the studio, for them to start working on my preliminaries ideas.
CitizenM Paris La Defénse Hotel (more information)
- Liquid State
More advanced project, technical notions, readjustment of the concept…More precise drawings, we work with layers, at that stage, you start to understand the buildings, it is when you try to transfer the first emotions and sketches into something that could be built. It is still all about sensation but with a tangible aspect… All the pieces of the building are subjects to sketches, how the roof is supposed to cover the pass that I wanted to create from the very beginning, creating this very precise perspective, I wanted to save and emphasize after visiting the site…
Renzo Piano
Nicholas Grimshaw
- Solid State
Imaginary becomes reality… drawing are more accurate, we are talking about details. The concept is assumed, there is no way to turn back. We go deep in the project. The scale has changed. Nuts and bolts…
“L’homme est condamné à être libre”- Jean Paul Sartre
“Creativity is nothing but a mind set free”- Torrie T. Asai
“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design”- Charles Eames
“An idea is salvation by imagination”- Frank Lloyd Wright
“One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like starting all over again”- Renzo Piano
Conclusion
Drawing for an Architect has to be saved as a “small” space of freedom. We are Artists, in France the National school of fine Arts (École des Beaux Arts) allways gave a special place for Architecture. The Architect has to be in a certain way a bit “schyzophren”, engineer and artiste, precise and messy… If we lose this skill, we lose part of our soul.
We don’t have to draw as Leonardo Da Vinci nor “real” artists, drawing is a language… Make you understanding is the aim. You will notice that like the music, drawing and sketches are an international language, understood by all.
Drawing is part of our practice and has to be shown… Drawing is freedom, drawing is the best way for dreaming and going further, away from the limited tools offered by our “drawing software” …
Libeskind
Gehry
