Busy making money

Settling down to work after the past few weeks of traveling and running half marathons – I was looking forward to it, the quiet hour in the morning before everyone else shows up in the office. Listening to Emma Eyres on ABC Classic FM with a cup of coffee and drawing up the design for a new house.

Pencil on butter paper is the most effective way to work; layer upon layer until the final idea comes to the surface and it is drawn up with firmer lines and a hard edge provided by the side of the scale rule. 

Then sketches are photocopied – dark lines on plain white cartridge, colour them up with stubs of school grade colour pencils. Nothing fancy, just enough to distinguish between the inside and outside, and to frame the building with the landscape.

While floor plans give order to the design; sections through the building show the potential quality of space. A series of sketches to show differing view points as one moves through the building is a favourite way to show difference sensory experiences and to show off the design.

Architecture students might associate this type of 'walk-through' with computer animation, but it is actually much older. Gordon Cullen calls it 'serial-vision' in his book "Townscape" -
I learnt about this when I was in Year 4 of Uni. and I have been fascinated with it ever since.

In the end, it is the design idea that is the most important - how it is presented is secondary although it must have clarity and precision, and sometimes the tools you need are close at 'hand'