complex curves

"... assumptions you tend to make of familiar objects can distract you from looking carefully. Distractions can be reduced and sketches made more interesting... " by selecting man-made objects with complex curves.

I didn't find this exercise as inspiring as some of the others, and decided to take note from earlier in the book where Laseau states "As beneficial as drawing is to the designer, real skill develops from the pleasure that you get from drawing... draw only what interests you... "

Proportion and accuracy of profiles becomes very important with curves, and I noted that a pencil may have helped, however, "using pencil creates a tendency to be timid, either using very faint lines or erasing bad ones. Learning to sketch is the result of continual attempts to reproduce what you see with increasing degrees of accuracy."

don't be afraid of transformation

The 7th "Re-Shaping Rochester" series is my first. I'm very interested in - and inspired by - the mission of the Rochester Regional Community Design Center. 

As part of the Emerging Rochester Architect's "ERA @" series, we've been participating together in some of the many wonderful things already going on around Rochester, in pursuit of our paired missions for Professional Development and Entertainment / Camaraderie. To that end, there were a handful of 'intern architects' from the Rochester Region generously added to the guest roster for Peter Park's inaugural session in the 2012 program, and I was among the very impressed.

His talk was entitled "Transformation: Don't be Afraid of it." I couldn't quite keep up with Peter in drawings or notes, but here were some of my efforts:

(I think they clarify why I hope you'll be seeing some Visual Notes & hand lettering work around these parts some day soon - my rapid work is often not as attractive or legible as the subjects warrant!)

The neighborhoods based removal of the Park East Freeway in Milwaukee and the transition to a form-based code in Denver were among the many city planning initiatives Park had lead and used, successfully, to elucidate his points.

My two favorite parts of Peter's talk were:

1. the fact that many of his initiatives have worked for us in local small cities, or were easily understood as replicable in other places, and
2. his great speaking presence - ice breakers & quotables were not only entertaining, but engaging: 

"I'm Peter Park. I'm a planner. And I think planning matters."
(so watch out for what I say! and yet, I'm here as an expert, and as a passionate individual who deeply believes in what I'm up to... )

If you're in Rochester, I hope to see you at the next talk!

sketching in January

January was so (typically?) intense that I honestly didn't expect to find much when I looked back at the 'daily' sketching series... fortunately, my memory was a bit inaccurate - it seems that I must have truly re-incorporated the sketching habit into my daily doings.

There were the regular arch daily, build blog and life-content sketches: 

quite a few, actually...

then there were a significant number of 'sketching to think' series, including those from my LEED studies:









some from reading "Norwegian Wood: the thoughtful architecture of Wenche Selmer"

still more from "Wood Houses"

and the thoughtful, enjoyable "Think Like an Architect" by Hal Box

Clearly, I'm going to sorely miss my (now expired) Inter Library Loan Services! Do you draw to document / interpret / extrapolate what you're reading? And by the way, what are you reading?!

unpredictable configurations

"several other objects make good subjects for contour drawings. The best are objects whose configurations are unpredictable... "

the next Contour Drawing exercise with Paul Laseau involved shoe laces: