San Diego Civic Theatre, San Diego, California: Conceptual color marker sketch on yellow trace paper shows the exuberance of opening night.
For past decades, I have explored architectural ideas through drawing: from tentative doodles to scratchy sketches, from colored diagrams to illustrative depictions. Though a variety of technological tools are at my fingertips—CAD, 3DS, Photoshop, even AI—I still prefer the simplest of tools at my desk, a pencil and my hand.
Design sketches can be artifacts representing a search for ideas, sometimes an elliptical journey of tests and failures. In other cases, sketches can establish the conceptual narrative and design agenda—a graphic thesis, a 2D picture that launches the creative process. Design sketches can also be gestural capturing gestalt and overall expression, as taught in figure drawing classes. Or perhaps, an illustration can delineate an architectural caricature, not unlike the art within the comic books of my youth.
Here, I have collected 17 various sketches of mine for your perusal—all part of a creative journey, not to be scrutinized as a final product or conclusive solution.
Saffron restaurant, Beverly Hills, California: An intentionally crude collage of marker and craft papers explores broad ideas of patterns, colors and fabrics—ignoring tedious details.Din Tai Fung restaurant, The Americana at Brand, Glendale, California: For this 160-seat, 7,000-square-foot restaurant, thin and thick black ink lines display the patterned wood and glass screens wrapping from walls to ceiling.Pacific Christian High School, Culver City, California: Color pencils over color markers over a photocopy of a pencil drawing—a bird’s eye view show three brick anchor buildings (theater, library and cafeteria) connected by occupiable green roofs.Library at the American University of Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt: Quick five-minute pencil sketch of shade and shadow expresses the Egyptian-influenced modern design and associated stone pattern (while w/ HHPA).Taegu Arena, Taegu, Korea: For a 14,000-seat basketball arena, gestural sketch on yellow trace paper—a few lines represent the curved glass walls and saddleback roof.Start Select esports lounge and bar, Arcadia, California: Heavy shades and tones from markers and color pencils capture the hangout mood of technology and drinks.Buddhist Temple, Natural Bridge, Virginia: A minimal pencil and marker drawing made evocative with a Photoshoped backdrop of the property’s actual trees.Greenman Elementary School, West Aurora, Illinois: A piano work by J.S. Bach inspires the rhythm of windows on the building’s brick surfaces, a school that emphasizes a performing arts curriculum–color pencil and pen.Robbins Elementary School, Trenton, New Jersey: 20-second doodle of pen and color pencils explores how the proposed collision of new glass additions to an existing traditional red brick building.Kenter Residence, Los Angeles, California: A traditional living room captured in mere pencil lines and modest textures.EC Kids fitness and community center, Culver City, California: An aerial view depicts playful forms, recreational areas and youthful spirit, inserted into an existing 10,000-square-foot industrial warehouse, done in color markers.Aztec Student Union, San Diego State University, San Diego, California: For a new 230,000-square-foot university center, a fast and loose five-minute, color pencils sketch exhibits the public space, the heart of the design. (while w/ HHPA).Sushi Noguchi, Yorba Linda, California: Quick repetitive pencil line work captures the many wood slats that provide privacy, filtered sunlight, ceiling interest, and overall interior warmth and character.Herb Alpert Music Center, Los Angeles City College, California: Renovation of an existing stair, color pencil, markers, and paper collage on white trace.
Why do I sketch? Sketching comprises many things: artistic ideas, physically moving one’s body, and communicating an idea to an audience. With drawing, I enjoy the connection between my brain and my hand, between my imagination and a pencil, between an idea and a blank piece of paper. I also find complacency in how graphite moves across the tooth of vellum or how ink slides across smooth trace.
Herb Alpert Music Center, Los Angeles City College, California: Exploratory sketches for a new lobby, pen in sketchbook.
