The drawing table takes center stage in the studio. We have meetings here, we eat together here, we entertain friends and guests after hours, but most of all, we draw here.
Quick and messy, slow and refined, technical, artsy, with pens, pencils, markers, or whatever is at arms length, we draw in many ways and the act of drawing in this communal space says a great deal about how we work as designers and planners.
Our drawings spur discussion, reflection, and engage whomever walks by the table. A drawing begins as a dot, line, smudge in the morning, and by the end of the day (with layers and layers of trace paper piling up underneath) has evolved into a concept.
A professor at the Pennsylvania State University, Arch. James Wines, has spoken on numerous occasions regarding the continued relevance of using hand-drawing in todays computer-dominated world. The following is an excerpt from one of his papers on the topic that we particularly enjoy:
‘When electronic mechanisms replace the filtration of idea development through tactile means, the fertile territory of “subliminal accident” is lost. This refers to marginal calligraphy that dribbles off the edge of the paper, the inadvertent congestion of squiggly lines with no apparent meaning, the unwelcome blobs of ink that drop off a pen tip, or the inclusion of seemingly irrelevant references that have nothing to do with initial intentions. On innumerable occasions over the years, I have been the creative beneficiary of my own graphic musings and the chaotic trail of ambiguous images left behind by random charcoal smudges and watercolor washes. In a variety of miraculous ways, this pictorial detritus, hand-drawn on paper without any predetermined architectonic mission, has often become the springboard for new ideas.’
We are always drawing… here are a few recent concepts investigating potential courtyard arrangements for a future GUCCI factory near Florence and clearly demonstrates multiple variations of a single concept (the tuscan countryside in miniature).
