when i was at michigan, hand sketching wasn't really valued at all. when i was at arizona state, hand sketching was valued above all else. i attended both schools more or less in the same era, so i can't say it really had anything to do with what the trend of the time was. different people, different schools, have different cultures and value means and methods of production differently. and honestly, i don't know anything about your work, about your professor, or your relationship to him. it might not be that your professor likes hand sketching better, but instead that in attempting to develop your talents as a designer, he feels that you specifically for some reason need to develop that side of your work if something is missing in your digital work. i've had some professors encourage me to do things by hand, and others encourage me to do things digitally. it all depended at the time on what the studio was trying to accomplish, and how my skills at the time fit into that.
So, Jump, are you saying that sketches don't matter if no one else sees them, further anything that's not presented does not matter so long as we arrive at a finished product?
That reasoning seems flawed to me.
Drawing, and I can only speak for myself of course, is about more than communication with others. It's a dialogue and a record. I don't value design sketching because it may or may not go into my portfolio.
I could probably argue that design sketching is a product in and of itself, a document recording the thought process leading up to the built product that you could hypothetically hand off to another architect or consultant if so needed, but thats not my point.
I agree that the design process is organic and should probably happen however it wants to happen not however we want it to be--sketching, 3d modeling, psychokinesis, whatever works.
I'm not trying to say that either is better. I was originally only making the observation that one (sketching) seems to consistently be missing and I wondered if this indicated an absence of thorough investigative and critical thinking process.
I'm not whining that people are or are not drawing by hand. That argument is irrelevant, I dont care.
What else bothers me is that it seems like a lot of people in this thread seem to be confused about the difference between 'illustrative hand drawing' and 'design sketching.'
It's sort of like when I made a post on this website a while ago about 'rendering' (I meant it in the general sense, as in illustration) and everyone pounced on me, telling me I would need XX RAM and XX video card, etc, etc to produce a 'rendering.'
jump, my view may be skewed to think hand drafting is fast and simple: the project I drew by hand (1998) didn't have very many changes, nor did it have very many details to draw. But that may have been because I was the only architect on a staff of engineers and contractors and their project delivery system was definitely more about the end product, and not the process or design work. It was an exisiting radio station, about 3,000 s.f., renovated into a holding and processing station for the INS. Needed to meet some difficult technical specs, but otherwise it was straight forward.
For the record, I totally enjoy both hand drawn and digital work, and neither excel nor suck at either. Personally, digital stuff makes me overthink it all, which takes longer for me. I also strive for the perfection that the digital files can enable, which isn't the best thing to do, wastes time.
I subscribe to a daily quote, and today's is from Andy Rooney: I thought it was cute and applicable: "Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
lol. that is true strawbeary. i was like that when i was just starting. i actually remember adding more detail to a drawing than our plotter could print. black blobs all over the place, becasue the pen was drawing the lines (this was before modern printing, as you can guess). I don't have that problem anymore, i guess it is something i learned to manage...
truth be told i came from fine arts background. i spent about 10 years painting before i went to architecture school, and i am very comfy with brush, chisel or pencil. but i don't expect that kind of background from the people i work with. in fact i would prefer if they were firefightetrs or something. the more differing starting points the more interesting the end point. actually, as it happens my business partner was taught architecture by a very famous landscape architect, and he is quite good at what he does. he barely every lays pen to paper.
larchinect no i don't think dwg is irrelevant, i just don't think it is a requirement. good design can be drawn poorly and still the quality comes through. look at steven holl. i know he is famous for his paintings, but i don't think anyone in art world would agree. his stuff is at best workmanly. but bad designs, no matter how well you render it or draw it will still look like shite.
zaha is not a particularly great 2d artist either, but the value of paper architecture is clear when you see her work. in that sense sure graphic skills are important.
still, not sure if that is getting us anywhere. i draw in my sketchbook every day. i also write essays in it and occasionally write grocery lists in it too. they are about the same in terms of what they do, in my opinion.
intheloop, yes there are lots of "un-educated" architects here. they are very competent. the firm partners are i assume great at communication or they would be out of business. most of them can draw quite well too. what they can't do is think critically, with notable exceptions (like Ando). which is really my point, in the end. If you can draw, cool. if you can't draw but know how to talk and how to think fast and critically i am not so concerned. if you can only draw, only render, only make models or diagrams? not enough. we have been through this in the office many times. it is never the drawing skills that frustrate us when we are working with people. never.
well anyway, that is all just my opinion, and my situation is rather out of the norm, so do take with as many grams of salt as you like.
i do have one question. isn't it most likely that landscape architects include more drawings than architects only because software is still not particularly very good at working with the organic ideas and forms that are necessary in the profession? when that shifts, won't the profession take the same route as architecture? or is it really something about how the professions work that causes the difference?
It is both. I think the nature of the medium, landscape, tends to be more conducive to 'loose' hand drawing. Nevertheless, I typically on hand sketch when I'm trying to figure something out or for fun. Most of my presentation renderings tend to be digital. To that end, I see photoshop being the best didgital representation tool for LA's. Photoshop is an incredibly powerful program that melds well with 3D architectural renders for us. You render the building and we photoshop in the landscape..Thats sort of how I see that process moving forward.
ah, that is interesting, larchitect, about the role of digital tools, i mean.
about communication and critical thinking, no i don't mean to say that verbal communication is special compared to graphic communication and so on.
when it comes down to it the ability to be critical in an intelligent way is what is important, after that the medium of communication is secondary. whatever works is cool, as long as it works well - sketch, model, text or talk, it's all good to me. so when we are looking at portfolios we don't look at the quality of the renderings but the quality of the thinking behind them. after all this time it is not too hard to sort one from the other.
mind you if a person has amazing skills and amazing ideas then is super coolio for me. the problem is to find those people. amazingly hard usually, and i guess that is also why many companies have HR departments.
"I tell my students if they don't know how to draw live in conversation, upside-down and across the table, that they'll never drive the bus," he said. "It's about that moment of looking at another person, into their eyes, and agreeing about what you're going to do. And freehand is the best way to do that."
Hand drawing isn't dead - there is no "over it" to get to, jp. Also recent thinking on cave painting is that it was a means to get to a trance-like state. So not really about communication with others, which is the aspect of hand drawing to which Steven's quote refers.
Some people use it, some don't. I find it incredibly useful as a communication tool frequently, but I'm not hand drafting my projects any longer.
In addition to the ability to communicate with a client on the fly as Donna notes, I love the iterative nature of hand drawing in the office and the fact that I cannot simply revise a drawing as you can digitally. The longer timeframe of hand drawing and the time it takes to draw something manually over and over allows for a lot of time to think about the project/detail/whatever that I am convinced improves the design of a project (at least for me).
i hand draw, and prefer it, but my sketching/drawing is intensely personal, and while i am certain i can draw upside down, in a convo, i'd prefer not to.
haha. as all the students were quietly drawing their pencil work today, i said "hand drawing is dead" just to throw them off a little. after few seconds of continued silence, one of them lift her head up from her drawing and said, "i heard it is coming back" we all had to laugh.. i love teaching first year once a year.
they made these 5"x5" cubes last week. except few, for most of them it was first time ever they built a model. and now, they are drawing it artfully (plans, sections, elevations and axonometrics, again for the first time ever.)
conversations range from hilarious to brilliant and thoughtful. a lot of fun.
i would not want hand drawing to die. in fact, i am thinking of completing my next project completely by set of hand drawings, just because i know how and just to look at it retrospectively and comparatively. and, i will write a diary about it, longhand of course.;.)
i mostly learned hand drawing initially and there was a time where i was pretty good and made some nice drawings and decent sketches. i think it is a great skill.
but now i take a laptop to meetings and can build in rhino or sketchup at the pace of the conversation
it has a similar wow factor for the client as watching a sketch appear on the spot and i come away with a solid start on the conceptual model
i agree with the comment above that hand drawing, for me, does add a dimension, especially having the drawing taped to a board and interacting with it from multiple distances, moving it around into different light conditions.....it is a great way to think through a design......and the repetitive nature of the process puts me in a peaceful trance......or it did....i never have an opportunity to draw by hand any more, though in my free time I've drawn a few things by hand just to enjoy the process
although I have found that I still prefer to think through details by hand first --- that is how i was taught and it is now how i think about them
incidentally i have found that modeling with BIM has made me more prone to hand sketching. i believe there is a huge difference between designing in section and designing in 3d and then cutting a slice. in design terminology, i will usually differentiate between a section and a slice. BIM can easily cut slices, but it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to truly design in section. this is as opposed to hand drawing but also to a more vector-based design program (obviously, such as autocad) whose interface is essentially analogous to a mechanical drafting table.
the first thing i do when i begin BIM construction documents (in this case, vectorworks, although it works in revit as well) is i sketch out a general section of the building on paper, with all of the construction datums listed out. this way, they can't be changed or nudged accidentally, and they are always available for reference regardless of what drawing i'm working on. this hand drawn sketch gets taped up on the wall next to my monitor.
in addition to this, i am always frequently exploring details on trace and scrap paper, which enables me to again, design in section (and plan and elevation) but to do so in a way that is much more fluid and expressive than the computer will allow. to a point one could dispute this if we were talking about rhino or sketchup (my two favorite modeling programs, one for nurbs, the other for rectilinear objects) but i find revit, vectorworks, and archicad for that matter to be extremely limiting in terms of how they "think", what types of objects they "want" to make and how they allow you to conceive of them both in your mind and on the computer.
whether in terms of BIM, CAD, or any 3d modeler, it is interesting how the computer has either reinforced or altered our convictions about how we are supposed to think spatially as designers. while it could be said that people who draw by hand (or with CAD) might have a more "antiquated" thought process about how information is used in a design workflow, i still believe that this type of thinking allows a more developed thought process about construction, as it allows our imagination to inhabit the spaces inside our objects and the materials they are made of which allows us to understand the objects not as they are seen experientially, but how their internal spatial makeup is assembled, and how that spatial makeup constitutes whole.
perhaps i'm just a bit old school, but i think the ability to think this way gives one a kind of "x-ray vision" about what they are making and how it works which still provides a heavy advantage when designing, whether if drawing by hand, expressively modeling in 3d, working with BIM, or working with CAD.
there is also a whole aesthetic to hand drawing that will probably never disappear entirely (i like drawing)
"incidentally I have found that modeling with BIM has made me more prone to hand sketching"
True When I am working on part of a project, I find it easier to sketch out a design situation on trace, and approach team members with a question as aupposed to say - "Uh, can you save to Central and look at 3D View XXX, and then at Level 2 Floor Plan, Room 68 - Who has time for it? I can sketch it far quicker than putting someone through that hassle - Since using Revit, my Hand sketching has improved just to figure stuff out, and to communicate ideas especially with those who have 20+ years with legacy drawing methods - I used to get "giged on" "didn't they teach you how to draw in school?" for making my PA save to Central and look at certain sheets and views - No No, not 2 hours befor we post - I started using trace and and 3 pens of light, med, and heavy line weights - also red and a box full of COL Erase pencils.
Okay, this is probably too long, but I'm going to paste here some thoughts I had about teaching hand drawing a long time ago on my archaic proto-blog. I am a proponent of hand drawing, especially hard-line hand drafting, as the first means of representation that architecture students should learn. Here are some reasons I think why hand drawing still matters in architecture schools: (note: I've cut out the 'weak' arguments, which were all about student psychology).
I work almost entirely digitally at the moment, but I sketch a fair amount when brainstorming my own projects (i.e. not for work). I teach at Pratt.
1. (strong) Hand drafting is the quickest way to learn about line-weight — i.e. about different kinds of line and how to deploy them to establish a meaninful hierarchy or set of relationships in a drawing. AutoCAD and other software can do this too, but they do not put the same onus on the student to establish a set of line weights and then to stick to that decision for the duration of the production of the drawing.
2. (strong) Hand drafting is the only way to really understand how projected drawings (axons, perspectives) really work. I.e. it makes the difference between a 3D software “user” and an architect. Why? Because in hand drafting you draw not only lines that define the form of the space under discussion, you also draw lines that carry information about that space around the page, to project to other views. So you develop very quickly an understanding of which views are richest in information, or most productive in terms of comparing different parts of the space. This argument is one of several you’ll see here that depend on the slowness of hand-drawing (see below).
4. (strong) Hand drafting makes it very easy to teach and critique work in a studio setting, because it’s all right there on the desk in front of you and the student. Mistakes can be fixed (and be seen to be fixed) almost immediately. Trace paper becomes a site for negotiation between instructor and student about what’s being done, and why. In other words, the hand drawing is a shared site of learning; the drafting table acts something like a miniature surgical theater. This, to me, is one of the strongest arguments I can give. It has to do with the pedagogical space around the student’s work. The computer screen can’t yet provide this level of shared, quasi-public accessibility to the work in progress.
6. (strong) Hand drafting gets students to focus on the work and the drawings themselves without getting bogged down and stressed out with printing problems. It also fosters a palpably intense work atmosphere in studio because the students are all in there producing work at a scale that makes it easy to peer-review, or even just peek at over somebody’s shoulder. Finally, it lets students run through most of the major forms of architectural thinking and representation without needing to switch media or programs. This is a logistical and psychological argument that is also quite strong. Ask the students!
8. (medium) There is a way of thinking about line in hand drawing that the computer cannot replicate easily. Namely, each line in a hand drawing is laid down over time on the paper, as the deposit of a controlled gesture. Curvature, planned or spontaneous, is seen as a steady, incremental deviation from the ruled line. This is really an argument about accuracy, I would say: are you really producing the line you are trying to produce? How is your tool limiting you?. I recognize that the computer can be an accurate tool for thinking, also — it just takes experience to be able to resist the shortcuts and the easy outs. Hence, again, my focus on a student’s first exposure to architectural drawing.
9. (strong) There is a rigor in planning and work-flow that hand drawing imposes that, despite its anachronism in a modern office setting, teaches the young architect a great deal in terms of time management, as a kind of improvisation during a performance. The speed of drawing affects the quality of the line; the transition from drawing one line to another becomes part of the craft and part of the thinking; the space required for each part of a drawing on the page is always in question; the best place to cut a section and the best direction to project information are contingent on the execution of earlier parts of the drawing. Basically, in contrast to computer drawing, the relative permanence of each line imposes a level of pre-planning and improvisation on the draftsperson. Since the drawing is played out in a set of planned sequences (e.g. drawing all the horizontal section lines, then all the vertical… or drawing the outline of an object, then the details inside, etc.), hand drawing affirms over and over that there is a continuous range of options, choices, and decisions in every drawing, that a drawing is not simply a specification, but the registry of a smooth thinking process, one that reacts to what it has just produced, revises itself, but never forgets where it has been. Hand drawing is inherently self-reflective.
Looking over the specific qualities above, I see two general issues:
A. The publicness of the work — where is the student/designer doing his thinking, who else has access to that space, who can comment, how closely can the comments be made (e.g. a layer of trace paper), and how quickly can the student react to the comments?
B. The timing of the work — how permanent is each decision in the student’s process, how quickly does the student learn to think about what he is actually doing, what is the distance between a thought, its expression in some medium, and its ‘rendering’ in some more permanent way? (I’m thinking of the distance between thinking, clicking, and printing, for instance).
that was COMPLETELY worth bumping this thread. thanks, george! a wonderful and patient explanation.
i might just post it over the copier at work for all the interns in the office who refuse to draw!
it's a problem in the office, too, folks: if your work lives in the box and seldom gets printed, you're either intentionally avoiding review/critique/further development or you're doing the same unintentionally. you may avoid anybody messing with your work (or making more work for you - which, unfortunately, i think is the reason more often than not) but the work suffers.
the publicness of the work comments above are right on the money. working on drawings by hand out on your desk where all can comment and participate - whether in tandem with the computer work or not - is hugely valuable to an office's efforts to engage everyone in making every project better.
great thread. Thank G Showman for your post - I really enjoyed reading your perspective and I hope those in school are paying attention. I feel strongly about honing hand-drawing skills into practice, and reinforce this with my students whenever possible. I agree with previous posts - it's not a question of "either" but one must be proficient at BOTH.
A professor of mine called it the "truck hood test": can you show up to a jobsite, stretch drawings over the hood of a truck, and sketch out what mean to communicate? Or do you say, "Um, lemme go back to my office, get on the box, print and get back to you on that?"
Hand Drawing is Dead.
when i was at michigan, hand sketching wasn't really valued at all. when i was at arizona state, hand sketching was valued above all else. i attended both schools more or less in the same era, so i can't say it really had anything to do with what the trend of the time was. different people, different schools, have different cultures and value means and methods of production differently. and honestly, i don't know anything about your work, about your professor, or your relationship to him. it might not be that your professor likes hand sketching better, but instead that in attempting to develop your talents as a designer, he feels that you specifically for some reason need to develop that side of your work if something is missing in your digital work. i've had some professors encourage me to do things by hand, and others encourage me to do things digitally. it all depended at the time on what the studio was trying to accomplish, and how my skills at the time fit into that.
So, Jump, are you saying that sketches don't matter if no one else sees them, further anything that's not presented does not matter so long as we arrive at a finished product?
That reasoning seems flawed to me.
Drawing, and I can only speak for myself of course, is about more than communication with others. It's a dialogue and a record. I don't value design sketching because it may or may not go into my portfolio.
I could probably argue that design sketching is a product in and of itself, a document recording the thought process leading up to the built product that you could hypothetically hand off to another architect or consultant if so needed, but thats not my point.
I agree that the design process is organic and should probably happen however it wants to happen not however we want it to be--sketching, 3d modeling, psychokinesis, whatever works.
604-
Who's 'whining?'
I'm not trying to say that either is better. I was originally only making the observation that one (sketching) seems to consistently be missing and I wondered if this indicated an absence of thorough investigative and critical thinking process.
I'm not whining that people are or are not drawing by hand. That argument is irrelevant, I dont care.
What else bothers me is that it seems like a lot of people in this thread seem to be confused about the difference between 'illustrative hand drawing' and 'design sketching.'
It's sort of like when I made a post on this website a while ago about 'rendering' (I meant it in the general sense, as in illustration) and everyone pounced on me, telling me I would need XX RAM and XX video card, etc, etc to produce a 'rendering.'
jump, my view may be skewed to think hand drafting is fast and simple: the project I drew by hand (1998) didn't have very many changes, nor did it have very many details to draw. But that may have been because I was the only architect on a staff of engineers and contractors and their project delivery system was definitely more about the end product, and not the process or design work. It was an exisiting radio station, about 3,000 s.f., renovated into a holding and processing station for the INS. Needed to meet some difficult technical specs, but otherwise it was straight forward.
For the record, I totally enjoy both hand drawn and digital work, and neither excel nor suck at either. Personally, digital stuff makes me overthink it all, which takes longer for me. I also strive for the perfection that the digital files can enable, which isn't the best thing to do, wastes time.
I subscribe to a daily quote, and today's is from Andy Rooney: I thought it was cute and applicable: "Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
lol. that is true strawbeary. i was like that when i was just starting. i actually remember adding more detail to a drawing than our plotter could print. black blobs all over the place, becasue the pen was drawing the lines (this was before modern printing, as you can guess). I don't have that problem anymore, i guess it is something i learned to manage...
truth be told i came from fine arts background. i spent about 10 years painting before i went to architecture school, and i am very comfy with brush, chisel or pencil. but i don't expect that kind of background from the people i work with. in fact i would prefer if they were firefightetrs or something. the more differing starting points the more interesting the end point. actually, as it happens my business partner was taught architecture by a very famous landscape architect, and he is quite good at what he does. he barely every lays pen to paper.
larchinect no i don't think dwg is irrelevant, i just don't think it is a requirement. good design can be drawn poorly and still the quality comes through. look at steven holl. i know he is famous for his paintings, but i don't think anyone in art world would agree. his stuff is at best workmanly. but bad designs, no matter how well you render it or draw it will still look like shite.
zaha is not a particularly great 2d artist either, but the value of paper architecture is clear when you see her work. in that sense sure graphic skills are important.
still, not sure if that is getting us anywhere. i draw in my sketchbook every day. i also write essays in it and occasionally write grocery lists in it too. they are about the same in terms of what they do, in my opinion.
intheloop, yes there are lots of "un-educated" architects here. they are very competent. the firm partners are i assume great at communication or they would be out of business. most of them can draw quite well too. what they can't do is think critically, with notable exceptions (like Ando). which is really my point, in the end. If you can draw, cool. if you can't draw but know how to talk and how to think fast and critically i am not so concerned. if you can only draw, only render, only make models or diagrams? not enough. we have been through this in the office many times. it is never the drawing skills that frustrate us when we are working with people. never.
well anyway, that is all just my opinion, and my situation is rather out of the norm, so do take with as many grams of salt as you like.
i do have one question. isn't it most likely that landscape architects include more drawings than architects only because software is still not particularly very good at working with the organic ideas and forms that are necessary in the profession? when that shifts, won't the profession take the same route as architecture? or is it really something about how the professions work that causes the difference?
Jump-
I know this thread is dying, but quick question:
It seems you attach critical thinking skill with verbal communication (people skills), when wouldn't you say it is often the reverse?
Jump-
To answer you question from my perspective:
It is both. I think the nature of the medium, landscape, tends to be more conducive to 'loose' hand drawing. Nevertheless, I typically on hand sketch when I'm trying to figure something out or for fun. Most of my presentation renderings tend to be digital. To that end, I see photoshop being the best didgital representation tool for LA's. Photoshop is an incredibly powerful program that melds well with 3D architectural renders for us. You render the building and we photoshop in the landscape..Thats sort of how I see that process moving forward.
ah, that is interesting, larchitect, about the role of digital tools, i mean.
about communication and critical thinking, no i don't mean to say that verbal communication is special compared to graphic communication and so on.
when it comes down to it the ability to be critical in an intelligent way is what is important, after that the medium of communication is secondary. whatever works is cool, as long as it works well - sketch, model, text or talk, it's all good to me. so when we are looking at portfolios we don't look at the quality of the renderings but the quality of the thinking behind them. after all this time it is not too hard to sort one from the other.
mind you if a person has amazing skills and amazing ideas then is super coolio for me. the problem is to find those people. amazingly hard usually, and i guess that is also why many companies have HR departments.
2 projects that i designed and built from a few sketches.....
full demo/design/build
design/build retail counters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/j-michael-welton/drawing-like-a-house-afir_b_814636.html
So is cave painting. I really miss cave painting. So is drawing in the sand.
Get over it.
Hand drawing isn't dead - there is no "over it" to get to, jp. Also recent thinking on cave painting is that it was a means to get to a trance-like state. So not really about communication with others, which is the aspect of hand drawing to which Steven's quote refers.
Some people use it, some don't. I find it incredibly useful as a communication tool frequently, but I'm not hand drafting my projects any longer.
Hand drawing is certainly not dead.
In addition to the ability to communicate with a client on the fly as Donna notes, I love the iterative nature of hand drawing in the office and the fact that I cannot simply revise a drawing as you can digitally. The longer timeframe of hand drawing and the time it takes to draw something manually over and over allows for a lot of time to think about the project/detail/whatever that I am convinced improves the design of a project (at least for me).
i hand draw, and prefer it, but my sketching/drawing is intensely personal, and while i am certain i can draw upside down, in a convo, i'd prefer not to.
haha. as all the students were quietly drawing their pencil work today, i said "hand drawing is dead" just to throw them off a little. after few seconds of continued silence, one of them lift her head up from her drawing and said, "i heard it is coming back" we all had to laugh.. i love teaching first year once a year.
they made these 5"x5" cubes last week. except few, for most of them it was first time ever they built a model. and now, they are drawing it artfully (plans, sections, elevations and axonometrics, again for the first time ever.)
conversations range from hilarious to brilliant and thoughtful. a lot of fun.
i would not want hand drawing to die. in fact, i am thinking of completing my next project completely by set of hand drawings, just because i know how and just to look at it retrospectively and comparatively. and, i will write a diary about it, longhand of course.;.)
i hope you do that orhan, but you have to then scan and post to blog.
i mostly learned hand drawing initially and there was a time where i was pretty good and made some nice drawings and decent sketches. i think it is a great skill.
but now i take a laptop to meetings and can build in rhino or sketchup at the pace of the conversation
it has a similar wow factor for the client as watching a sketch appear on the spot and i come away with a solid start on the conceptual model
i agree with the comment above that hand drawing, for me, does add a dimension, especially having the drawing taped to a board and interacting with it from multiple distances, moving it around into different light conditions.....it is a great way to think through a design......and the repetitive nature of the process puts me in a peaceful trance......or it did....i never have an opportunity to draw by hand any more, though in my free time I've drawn a few things by hand just to enjoy the process
although I have found that I still prefer to think through details by hand first --- that is how i was taught and it is now how i think about them
incidentally i have found that modeling with BIM has made me more prone to hand sketching. i believe there is a huge difference between designing in section and designing in 3d and then cutting a slice. in design terminology, i will usually differentiate between a section and a slice. BIM can easily cut slices, but it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to truly design in section. this is as opposed to hand drawing but also to a more vector-based design program (obviously, such as autocad) whose interface is essentially analogous to a mechanical drafting table.
the first thing i do when i begin BIM construction documents (in this case, vectorworks, although it works in revit as well) is i sketch out a general section of the building on paper, with all of the construction datums listed out. this way, they can't be changed or nudged accidentally, and they are always available for reference regardless of what drawing i'm working on. this hand drawn sketch gets taped up on the wall next to my monitor.
in addition to this, i am always frequently exploring details on trace and scrap paper, which enables me to again, design in section (and plan and elevation) but to do so in a way that is much more fluid and expressive than the computer will allow. to a point one could dispute this if we were talking about rhino or sketchup (my two favorite modeling programs, one for nurbs, the other for rectilinear objects) but i find revit, vectorworks, and archicad for that matter to be extremely limiting in terms of how they "think", what types of objects they "want" to make and how they allow you to conceive of them both in your mind and on the computer.
whether in terms of BIM, CAD, or any 3d modeler, it is interesting how the computer has either reinforced or altered our convictions about how we are supposed to think spatially as designers. while it could be said that people who draw by hand (or with CAD) might have a more "antiquated" thought process about how information is used in a design workflow, i still believe that this type of thinking allows a more developed thought process about construction, as it allows our imagination to inhabit the spaces inside our objects and the materials they are made of which allows us to understand the objects not as they are seen experientially, but how their internal spatial makeup is assembled, and how that spatial makeup constitutes whole.
perhaps i'm just a bit old school, but i think the ability to think this way gives one a kind of "x-ray vision" about what they are making and how it works which still provides a heavy advantage when designing, whether if drawing by hand, expressively modeling in 3d, working with BIM, or working with CAD.
there is also a whole aesthetic to hand drawing that will probably never disappear entirely (i like drawing)
le Bossman
"incidentally I have found that modeling with BIM has made me more prone to hand sketching"
True When I am working on part of a project, I find it easier to sketch out a design situation on trace, and approach team members with a question as aupposed to say - "Uh, can you save to Central and look at 3D View XXX, and then at Level 2 Floor Plan, Room 68 - Who has time for it? I can sketch it far quicker than putting someone through that hassle - Since using Revit, my Hand sketching has improved just to figure stuff out, and to communicate ideas especially with those who have 20+ years with legacy drawing methods - I used to get "giged on" "didn't they teach you how to draw in school?" for making my PA save to Central and look at certain sheets and views - No No, not 2 hours befor we post - I started using trace and and 3 pens of light, med, and heavy line weights - also red and a box full of COL Erase pencils.
see above posting by Le Bossman
so is rock 'n roll, country music, the american west, and family doctors. part of the deal.
Okay, this is probably too long, but I'm going to paste here some thoughts I had about teaching hand drawing a long time ago on my archaic proto-blog. I am a proponent of hand drawing, especially hard-line hand drafting, as the first means of representation that architecture students should learn. Here are some reasons I think why hand drawing still matters in architecture schools: (note: I've cut out the 'weak' arguments, which were all about student psychology).
I work almost entirely digitally at the moment, but I sketch a fair amount when brainstorming my own projects (i.e. not for work). I teach at Pratt.
1. (strong) Hand drafting is the quickest way to learn about line-weight — i.e. about different kinds of line and how to deploy them to establish a meaninful hierarchy or set of relationships in a drawing. AutoCAD and other software can do this too, but they do not put the same onus on the student to establish a set of line weights and then to stick to that decision for the duration of the production of the drawing.
2. (strong) Hand drafting is the only way to really understand how projected drawings (axons, perspectives) really work. I.e. it makes the difference between a 3D software “user” and an architect. Why? Because in hand drafting you draw not only lines that define the form of the space under discussion, you also draw lines that carry information about that space around the page, to project to other views. So you develop very quickly an understanding of which views are richest in information, or most productive in terms of comparing different parts of the space. This argument is one of several you’ll see here that depend on the slowness of hand-drawing (see below).
4. (strong) Hand drafting makes it very easy to teach and critique work in a studio setting, because it’s all right there on the desk in front of you and the student. Mistakes can be fixed (and be seen to be fixed) almost immediately. Trace paper becomes a site for negotiation between instructor and student about what’s being done, and why. In other words, the hand drawing is a shared site of learning; the drafting table acts something like a miniature surgical theater. This, to me, is one of the strongest arguments I can give. It has to do with the pedagogical space around the student’s work. The computer screen can’t yet provide this level of shared, quasi-public accessibility to the work in progress.
6. (strong) Hand drafting gets students to focus on the work and the drawings themselves without getting bogged down and stressed out with printing problems. It also fosters a palpably intense work atmosphere in studio because the students are all in there producing work at a scale that makes it easy to peer-review, or even just peek at over somebody’s shoulder. Finally, it lets students run through most of the major forms of architectural thinking and representation without needing to switch media or programs. This is a logistical and psychological argument that is also quite strong. Ask the students!
8. (medium) There is a way of thinking about line in hand drawing that the computer cannot replicate easily. Namely, each line in a hand drawing is laid down over time on the paper, as the deposit of a controlled gesture. Curvature, planned or spontaneous, is seen as a steady, incremental deviation from the ruled line. This is really an argument about accuracy, I would say: are you really producing the line you are trying to produce? How is your tool limiting you?. I recognize that the computer can be an accurate tool for thinking, also — it just takes experience to be able to resist the shortcuts and the easy outs. Hence, again, my focus on a student’s first exposure to architectural drawing.
9. (strong) There is a rigor in planning and work-flow that hand drawing imposes that, despite its anachronism in a modern office setting, teaches the young architect a great deal in terms of time management, as a kind of improvisation during a performance. The speed of drawing affects the quality of the line; the transition from drawing one line to another becomes part of the craft and part of the thinking; the space required for each part of a drawing on the page is always in question; the best place to cut a section and the best direction to project information are contingent on the execution of earlier parts of the drawing. Basically, in contrast to computer drawing, the relative permanence of each line imposes a level of pre-planning and improvisation on the draftsperson. Since the drawing is played out in a set of planned sequences (e.g. drawing all the horizontal section lines, then all the vertical… or drawing the outline of an object, then the details inside, etc.), hand drawing affirms over and over that there is a continuous range of options, choices, and decisions in every drawing, that a drawing is not simply a specification, but the registry of a smooth thinking process, one that reacts to what it has just produced, revises itself, but never forgets where it has been. Hand drawing is inherently self-reflective.
Looking over the specific qualities above, I see two general issues:
A. The publicness of the work — where is the student/designer doing his thinking, who else has access to that space, who can comment, how closely can the comments be made (e.g. a layer of trace paper), and how quickly can the student react to the comments?
B. The timing of the work — how permanent is each decision in the student’s process, how quickly does the student learn to think about what he is actually doing, what is the distance between a thought, its expression in some medium, and its ‘rendering’ in some more permanent way? (I’m thinking of the distance between thinking, clicking, and printing, for instance).
that was COMPLETELY worth bumping this thread. thanks, george! a wonderful and patient explanation.
i might just post it over the copier at work for all the interns in the office who refuse to draw!
it's a problem in the office, too, folks: if your work lives in the box and seldom gets printed, you're either intentionally avoiding review/critique/further development or you're doing the same unintentionally. you may avoid anybody messing with your work (or making more work for you - which, unfortunately, i think is the reason more often than not) but the work suffers.
the publicness of the work comments above are right on the money. working on drawings by hand out on your desk where all can comment and participate - whether in tandem with the computer work or not - is hugely valuable to an office's efforts to engage everyone in making every project better.
I don't see this as an either/or argument, it's a BOTH/AND. Ya gotta have it all. Add another two years to the professional degree. That'll fix it.
ha ha. i agree ya gotta have it all, but more school is the LAST thing i would recommend for architects!
great thread. Thank G Showman for your post - I really enjoyed reading your perspective and I hope those in school are paying attention. I feel strongly about honing hand-drawing skills into practice, and reinforce this with my students whenever possible. I agree with previous posts - it's not a question of "either" but one must be proficient at BOTH.
A professor of mine called it the "truck hood test": can you show up to a jobsite, stretch drawings over the hood of a truck, and sketch out what mean to communicate? Or do you say, "Um, lemme go back to my office, get on the box, print and get back to you on that?"
hi bossman :)
hey what's happenin
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