Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Drawing from Practice

Drawing from Practice explores and illuminates the ways that 26 diverse and reputable architects use freehand drawing to shape our built environment. Author J. Michael Welton traces the tactile sketch, from initial parti to finished product, through words, images, and photographs that reveal the creative process in action.

The book features drawings and architecture from every generation practicing today, including Aidlin Darling Design, Alberto Alfonso, Deborah Berke, Marlon Blackwell, Peter Bohlin, Warren Byrd, Ellen Cassilly, Jim Cutler, Chad Everhart, Formwork, Phil Freelon, Michael Graves, Frank Harmon, Eric Höweler and Meejin Yoon, in situ studio, Léon Krier, Tom Kundig, Daniel Libeskind, Brian MacKay-Lyons, Richard Meier, Bill Pedersen, Suchi Reddy, Witold Rybczynski, Laurinda Spear, Stanley Tigerman, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

Included is a foreword by Robert McCarter, architect, author and professor of architecture.

J. Michael Welton writes about architecture, art, and design for national and regional publications. His news articles, feature stories, and op-ed criticisms have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Dwell, Architectural Record, Ocean Home Magazine, Metropolis, Interior Design, Inform, and the Raleigh News & Observer. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 “J. Michael Welton’s Drawing from Practice is a fantastic book that sheds light on the creative process of how architects envision and bring their buildings to life. At a time when so much is lost to mechanization, Welton’s book reinforces the fact that nothing is as powerful and engaging as the art of the hand, especially in architecture. It is a book that every architecture student and enthusiast should have.” – Wendy Goodman, Design Editor, New York Magazine, USA

“Many architects will say that before they dreamed of building, they dreamed of art. In Drawing from Practice, J. Michael Welton explores this essential connection through his interviews with many of the most compelling minds practicing today. In so doing he establishes that architecture is art, and that through drawing, artists create buildings.” – Amanda Dameron, Editor-in-Chief, Dwell Media, USA

“Michael Welton’s deeply researched and thoughtfully composed book brings us inside the work and process of the nation’s esteemed architects. It is a powerful reminder of all the humanity that goes into the art, beyond the science and the mathematics and even the beauty. Through the architects’ drawings and words, we experience a rare intimacy.” – Lynn Medford, Editor, Washington Post Magazine, USA

“Profiling architects with different approaches and at various stages in their careers, Welton investigates the importance of a simple pencil and paper to dozens of firms. He reminds us that new doesn’t always mean better by exploring how the medium has adapted to contemporary practice, as both a foundation for and a supplement to the latest technology. Whether you’re an architect or just curious about how buildings go from notepad to brick and mortar, Drawing from Practice is an engaging, approachable read.” – MacKenzie Lewis Kassab, Editor-in-chief, A Magazine, Lebanon

“A must-read for architects and architecture enthusiasts alike, Drawing From Practice offers an unprecedented look at the creative processes of some of the most influential figures that shape our world – and the sketches that guide their work. The drawings presented feel intimate, the sources tapped reveal a wealth of knowledge, and J. Michael Welton’s writing, as always, is complex enough for experts while remaining accessible for casual fans of architecture.” – Amanda Koellner, Managing Editor, Design Bureau Magazine, USA Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 “In an age of cutting-edge technology, drawing by hand is not only an enduring art form, but a necessary step in the creative process for any successful architect. Combining his talents as a keen observer, incisive commentator and natural storyteller, J. Michael Welton takes complex subjects and turns them into engaging and informative essays with a detailed yet easy to understand writing style that will be enjoyed by academics, professionals and casual readers alike.” – Andrew Conway, Editor, Ocean Home Magazine, USA Drawing from Practice Architects and the Meaning of Freehand

J. Michael Welton Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group NEW YORK LONDON First published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

The right of J. Michael Welton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Welton, J. Michael. Drawing from practice : architects and the meaning of freehand / J. Michael Welton. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 1. Architectural drawing. 2. Drawing–Psychological aspects. I. Title. NA2708.W46 2015 720.28’4–dc23 2014022901

ISBN: 978-0-415-72508-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-72509-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-85691-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Goudy Oldstyle Std Acquisition Editor: Wendy Fuller Editorial Assistant: Grace Harrison Production Editor: Jennifer Birtill Designer/Typesetter: Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire For Ann,

Who Keeps the Faith Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 vii Contents

ix Introduction by J. Michael Welton xi Foreword by Robert McCarter

002 1 Aidlin Darling Design: Drawing for All the Senses 010 2 Alberto Alfonso: A Search for the Soul 018 3 Deborah Berke: A Tool for Thinking 026 4 Marlon Blackwell: The Thinking Drawing 034 5 Peter Bohlin: Drawing for Pleasure 042 6 Warren Byrd: The Collaborative Sketch 050 7 Ellen Cassilly: Talking and Sketching 058 8 James Cutler: The Externalization of Cognition 066 9 Chad Everhart: Mastering Mystery and Surprise 074 10 Formwork: An Incredibly Efficient Shorthand 082 11 Phil Freelon: The Language of Architecture 090 12 Michael Graves: Lessons Learned in Rome 098 13 Frank Harmon: Expressing the Idea 106 14 Höweler + Yoon: Winning Favor 114 15 in situ studio: Obsessed with Drawing 122 16 Léon Krier: Communicating Complex Information 130 17 Tom Kundig: The Poetry of the Sketch 138 18 Daniel Libeskind: An Act of Faith

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 146 19 Brian MacKay-Lyons: Instinctive and Quick 154 20 Richard Meier: A Way of Learning 162 21 Bill Pedersen: High Hopes 170 22 Suchi Reddy: As Natural as Breathing 180 23 Witold Rybczynski: Connecting to the Past 188 24 Laurinda Spear: A Collaborative Spirit 196 25 Stanley Tigerman: A Language Other than Architecture 204 26 Tod Williams and Billie Tsien: Steps Along the Way

212 Acknowledgements 216 Index This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 ix Introduction

Introduction

Pencil sketches, Virginia countryside, 1946–1947; Francis Conway Welton

This book found its inspiration in a triptych of pencil push to rescue Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. The drawings that are matted, framed, and hanging in my office in devastation, my father would write home in a V-mail, was Wake Forest, North Carolina. horrific.

They rest on a wall behind my grandfather’s Mission-style But at war’s end he found himself back in Virginia, engaged drawing table that now serves as my desk. Before it is my not in acts of destruction, but in those of creation. And father’s chair for that table, an Eames-like, early 1950s affair. his drawings – as interesting for the marks he left out as Icons of architecture from other eras, the table is oak-legged for those he put in – are potent symbols of a man with sure and walnut-topped, while the chair is curved and molded artistic talent. Indeed, all the buildings he’d later leave Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 plywood on a stainless-steel base. They provide ample space behind – some lean and modern, others in the Georgian and comfort for a writer, his laptop, lamp, and printer. Revival style of his father – started with a pencil sketch on paper. This trio of sketches was drawn during the winter of 1946 and 1947, in the rural countryside surrounding Charlottesville, In 2011, these same drawings inspired a feature in The where my father was a graduate student in the architecture Huffington Post on architects who draw by hand during this program at the University of Virginia. age of computers. Among those interviewed for that piece were Richard Meier, Michael Graves, Bill Pedersen, Brian Two years before, his class of 1943 at Virginia Military MacKay-Lyons, Frank Harmon, and Alberto Alfonso. Each Institute had packed up and marched off to the grim realities of these architects is featured in this book, alongside twenty of World War II in Europe and the Pacific. His army unit, the other firms made up of men and women who work together 87th Infantry Division, arrived in France in 1944, just in time ceaselessly to articulate the hand-sketch for a surprisingly to join General George Patton’s relentless and lightning-fast wide variety of reasons, and in a number of different ways. x Introduction

We’re fortunate also to be able to include a foreword by And, like the drawings in the rest of this book, they are Robert McCarter, the architect and professor whose easy-to- celebratory marks made during a talented architect’s read books on Carlo Scarpa, Louis Kahn, and Frank Lloyd thoughtful act of creation. Wright are considered masterpieces. Here, we have almost 1,200 words from the author, plus three of his own drawings of Scarpa’s designs. They are precise and illustrative for the text he offers.

J. Michael Welton Wake Forest, North Carolina Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 xi Foreword

Foreword

We Only Know What We Draw

Freehand drawings made by architects, whether of something existing or imagined, are fundamentally analytical and synthetic in nature – we draw to see, to know, to understand, to experience, and to imagine. Carlo Scarpa went so far as to say that he could not see something until he had drawn it: “I place things in front of me, on the paper, so I can see them. I want to see, therefore I draw. I can see an image only if I draw it.”1 For architects, there are three types of sketching: drawing as documentation, drawing as analysis, and drawing as designing or imagining. However, these three types of freehand drawings are not mutually exclusive, but rather overlap and interpenetrate during the act of designing. Marco Frascari characterized Scarpa’s design drawings as being at once both “construing and constructing” – drawing as both conceiving and making.2 Designing and drawing are intimately intertwined in the movements of the hand across the paper – in the inscribing of lines, in the profiling of volumes, in the blocking out of masses, in the texturing of surfaces, and in the shaping of shadows – as is indicated by the Italian word disegno, meaning both “drawing” and “design.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Drawing as documentation of an existing thing or place is often misunderstood as a passive form of recording. But the travel sketches of the best architects involve the process of abstraction – meaning literally “to draw from” or “to draw out of” – extracting through analysis the essential attributes McCarter Scarpa sketch 1. Querini Stampalia, Venice, May 15, of the place. Le Corbusier described the close relationship 1984; showing Scarpa’s renovation of staircase to library, with of sketching as documentation, sketching as discovery, and new stone treads and risers laid on top of existing stairs; note that sketching as design inspiration: new risers are cut and inset into existing nosing of treads, resulting in a permanent fusion of new and old.

When one travels and works with visual things – architecture, painting or sculpture – one uses one’s eyes and for good, entered, registered, inscribed. […] To draw oneself, draws, so as to fix deep down in one’s experience what is seen. to trace the lines, handle the volumes, organize the surface, Once the impression has been recorded by the pencil, it stays all this means first to look, and then to observe and finally to xii Foreword

discover, and it is then that inspiration may come. Inventing, creating, one’s whole being is drawn into action.3

Scarpa had Giambattista Vico’s aphorism, Verum Ipsum Factum, “truth is in the made,” embossed on the diplomas and engraved on the gate of the architecture school in Venice when he was its dean. The aphorism reflected Vico’s belief that human beings could only know and learn from the things that we ourselves, and others like us, had made. Scarpa’s interpretation of Vico’s aphorism, “we only know what we make,” was integral to his definition of both architectural education and practice. Scarpa’s design process emphasized drawing as an especially important kind of making, as if to say “we only know what we draw.” Scarpa maintained that he needed to draw something to see it, and this was reflected in his own practice of carefully sketching, with precise dimensions noted, the paintings and artifacts that he was charged with placing in his museum designs – literally drawing them into his own designs. In a similar way, as a part of his everyday routine, Alvaro Siza meticulously measures and records the dimensions of furniture, window and door openings, rooms, and details in his analytical sketches. In designing, Siza marks the same kinds of dimensions in his sketch drawings, irrespective of whether they are perspectival or orthographic. Sketches such as these serve to rebut the typical misapprehension that a “sketch” is not a careful and precise exercise. On the contrary, analytical design sketches Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 are among the most accurate drawings any architect ever McCarter Scarpa sketch 2. Accademia Museum, Venice, makes, due to the way they “take in hand” both the intuitive November 9, 2002; showing Scarpa’s addition of stone landings and stairs to connect different floor levels of existing buildings; and the measurable aspects of an experienced or imagined these exceptional designs have recently been “renovated” out of thing or place. existence, and today can no longer be experienced.

The insight that “we only know what we draw” is of critical modes of design, it has never been a part of the working importance to architects, yet it may be argued that it is of method of critics and historians. Scholarly studies tend to even greater value to architectural critics and historians, “read into” architecture, imposing preconceived theories those responsible for presenting architecture to the profession or interpretations on the unique work. Yet, in order to and the public. While freehand drawing is rightly perceived understand a work of architecture and the process by which it to be disappearing from the architectural education and was conceived and constructed, it would be more appropriate design process of the current generations, with their to the matter at hand to “draw from” the works themselves, obsessive focus on the digital to the exclusion of all other searching for the ordering principles that generated them. xiii Foreword

approach, analysis and composition are understood to be reciprocal – subjecting a work of architecture to formal, spatial, constructional, material, and experiential analysis through freehand drawing is in effect an attempt to find the marks of its making.

In the work of a few, exceedingly rare critics and historians, the sketch-drawing, as an analysis of the hand, forms the basis of a more engaged method, one that attempts to remain close to the architect in the act of designing – this approach is exemplified by the work of Otto Antonia Graf, who has described his process as “thinking drawing, drawing thinking.”4 Analytical sketching of this type engages the belief that the more closely, carefully, precisely, extensively, and extendedly one studies a building, the nearer one comes to understanding the concepts it embodies and the ordering principles that shaped it. Concomitantly, in designing a building, the longer and more intimately one develops the design, drawing inspiration from previously analyzed works of architecture, slowly construing and constructing the design through the embodied acts of imagination that are freehand drawings, the nearer one comes to realizing in built form and space the experiential potential of the initial conception. In criticism and design, where words tend to fail both historians and architects, analytical sketches prevail. As Goethe noted regarding his own travels: “We ought to talk less and draw more. I personally should like to renounce speech altogether Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 McCarter Scarpa sketch 3. Correr Museum, Venice (upper), and … communicate everything I have to say in sketches.”5 November 12, 2013, and Castelvecchio Museum, Verona (lower), November 13, 2013; upper sketch shows two unframed portrait Robert McCarter paintings mounted together in felt by Scarpa; lower sketch shows Architect and Author floor plan of second sculpture gallery room, with low polished plaster raised plinth-bases for standing sculpture figures; both Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture epitomize Scarpa’s dynamically asymmetrical compositions of Washington University in St. Louis rectangular figures in rectangular space.

Notes Architects have long recognized that the best way to “know” a building is by drawing its plan and section, analyzing the 1. Carlo Scarpa, quoted in Sergio Los, Carlo Scarpa, masses, volumes, surfaces, and details by sketching them. Architetto Poeta (Venice: Cluva, 1967), 17. This involves an experience of the hand that theoretical 2. Marco Frascari, “The Tell-the-Tale Detail,” VIA 7, The thought cannot replicate. In this literally “hands-on” Building of Architecture (1984), 24. xiv Foreword

3. Le Corbusier, Creation is a Patient Search (New York: 5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey Praeger, 1960), 37. (1786–1788), translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth 4. Otto Antonia Graf, Denken Zeichnen, Zeichnen Denken: Mayer (New York: Random House, 1962), ix. Zur Diagraphischen Methodologik (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1999). Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 1 Aidlin Darling Design: Drawing for All the Senses Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 1 003 Drawing for All the Senses

Darling, on the other hand, found his muse early on, in one of Louis Sullivan’s early 20th-century jewel box banks on the town square in Newark, Ohio, his hometown. There, his best friend’s father had set up an Eames-inspired, modernist architecture practice on the second floor. On the first, the historic structure had been stripped of its splendor to accommodate customers at a Baskin-Robbins retail outlet.

Still, glimmers of the master’s work shone through. “There were coffered ceilings with mosaic murals,” he says. “That’s what inspired me.”

He picked up diagramming from his friend’s father – and David Darling and Joshua Aidlin Photo by Marcus Hanschen never looked back. “I learned drafting skills before sketching skills,” he says. One comes from a family of artists, and the other grew up with a father and three brothers, all engineers. Today, the two partners at Aidlin Darling Design use different tools for drawing. Aidlin relies on pencils – a No. 2, to be One eschewed art in favor of baseball from an early age, while sure, but also his favorite, the Staedtler Mars Lumograph with the other earnestly embraced drawing in middle school. its wide graphic range spanning from very light touch to rich, dark tones. He may no longer carry a sketch pad with him But now Joshua Aidlin and David Darling – they met in the everywhere he goes, but he’s still drawing daily. And here’s mid-1980s in the architecture program at the University of why: Cincinnati – sketch avidly to understand a project, to allow it to speak to them, and to create award-winning architecture “If you think about the page – and the page could be a that stimulates all the human senses. napkin, a sketchbook, or lined paper – it’s completely open- ended with no borders,” he says. “You can draw multiple Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 “I was one of those students who hated school and wanted to scales, three dimensions or two dimensions, or an analog be a professional baseball player,” says Aidlin. “But I had to from three to two. I think that seamlessness challenges your pick an elective in high school. So I took a drafting class – brain to understand and study any problem in a multitude of and it wasn’t too painful.” vectors.”

He took another class the following year. This time his A look through da Vinci’s drawings, he adds, will reveal assignment was to design his own home – and he quickly the designer’s three-dimensional sketches next to a plan, developed a new passion. By the time he went to college, he along with two or three sectional drawings, all on one page. was taking every course in drawing he could find. Eventually he “It allows the mind to start problem-solving without any could sketch the human body as realistically as a photograph. preparation,” he says.

“It became a strength – I can always rely on my ability to Also important is the value of interpretation, particularly draw,” he says. in collaboration with colleagues. Sketching allows doors to 004 Chapter 1 Aidlin Darling Design

Elevation study – Windhover Contemplative Center, Stanford, CA. Kent Chiang, watercolor on paper

Plan study – Windhover Contemplative Center, Stanford, CA. Kent Chiang, watercolor on paper

open, from one mind to another. “My partner and I do it all interventions into the landscape with chipboard, and the time,” he says. “I’m reading into it my ideas and he has sometimes drawing on top of that,” Aidlin says. “He’ll work his, and through that dialogue we enrich a project during the on it, and then pin it up for an office-wide critique.” early stages.” His paper/sketch/models analyze a site’s landscape plan, After a series of hand-sketches, the partners and their topography, client program, and zoning codes and restraints. colleagues will study their designs on a computer screen. It’s a quick way to add layers of information that are critical “We’re pointing at the screen and using Sketchup to to the early form of a building. “I can crank them out in manipulate a form in the computer,” Darling says. “It has 20 minutes – I’ve found that it’s the best way to relieve my Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 its limitations – it wants to control what you do – so we try inhibitions,” Darling says. not to let it do that, through conversations among ourselves.” It’s a process that serves their architecture well, especially Then Darling will torque that process up, like an engineer at the Sonoma Vineyard Estate, completed in Northern might take something apart and put it back together in a California in 2013. On 140 acres in the shadow of Sonoma new way. Indeed, much as Hemingway describes a writer’s Mountain, they designed a main house, a guest house, a barn, potential to achieve a fourth or even fifth dimension with a sculpture garden, an orchard, and a sixty-acre vineyard. In the right combination of words, Darling has developed a new essence, it’s all a sculpture that adapts to the full potential of kind of three-dimensional sketch that’s part drawing, part its site, both macro and micro. Xerox, and part chipboard. “The client and I had a fascination with cartography,” “Dave leans towards topographical brown paper bags, wrinkled Darling said. “It led to an analysis of the property that’s very up with Xeroxes on top of them, inserting architectural three-dimensional.” Chapter 1 005 Drawing for All the Senses

Plan and sectional sketch – Vineyard Estate, Sonoma, CA. David Darling, felt-tip pen on paper

The estate is situated in an area with a number of undulating enabled them to foresee and reveal portions of buildings landscapes, made famous in author Jack London’s book, The and landscapes, one at a time, just as the seven moons Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Legend of the Valley of the Moons. appear at night.

“As you move through it at night, the moon disappears and “The spaces are revealed very iteratively, and not all at once,” reappears – giving the illusion of seven moons, as the legend Darling says. has it, with a foreshortening of space,” he says. “When you ascend one horizon, it will drop and reveal another horizon They extended the eclipsing nature of the project – mostly behind it.” related to the ground plane – even to the point of arrival at the main house. “You drive into the auto court and you The architects took all that to heart, studying the hear the crunching of gravel, and then you’re onto a stone landscape and inserting the buildings where they’d walkway and then there’s the trestle at the entry, and you’re impact the panorama as little as possible. Their floating above the ground,” Darling says. “There’s physical sketches and mapping – they estimate working through mapping – not just your eyes, but your ears and tactile hundreds of drawings and at least two dozen models – sensibilities too.” 006 Chapter 1 Aidlin Darling Design

Plan studies – Windhover Contemplative Center, Stanford, CA. Joshua Aidlin, lead and color pencil on trace paper

To make it all work, they collaborated on the design process with landscape architects, civil engineers, and mechanical engineers. Hand drawing was their primary means of communication.

“We’d have one-on-one meetings with fabricators or engineers, and everyone was sketching,” Aidlin says. “There’s something about the immediacy and the dialog of working through the details – and the people who you’re going to make it with are all at the table, with ideas about how they’re going to pull it off.” Massing studies – McEvoy Ranch Winery, Petaluma, CA. David Darling, butcher paper and chipboard Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Their Sonoma Vineyard Estate could be described as the work of artists, applied to a very large canvas. But it’s been informed by a team of engineers too.

And why not? It’s all solidly embedded in the firm’s DNA.

Massing studies – McEvoy Ranch Winery, Petaluma, CA. David Darling, butcher paper and chipboard Chapter 1 007 Drawing for All the Senses

Photograph of entry – Vineyard Estate, Sonoma, CA. Photo by John Sutton Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 008 Chapter 1 Aidlin Darling Design

Name: Joshua Aidlin, AIA • National AIA/COTE Top Ten Plus Green Projects – 355 11th Street Firm: Aidlin Darling Design, San Francisco, CA • National AIA Honor Award, Interior Education: University of Cincinnati, Bachelor of Architecture – Bar Agricole Architecture • California Architectural Foundation Owings Merit Award, Environmental Excellence – 355 11th Affiliations: Street • American Institute of Architects Member, San Francisco • CMACN Grand Award for Residential and Chapter Sustainable Design – Paso Robles Residence • SFMOMA Architecture + Design Forum Programming • Northern California IIDA Honor Award 2013 – Co-Chair Paso Robles Residence Major awards: Name: David Darling, AIA 2003: San Francisco AIA Design Excellence Award – Beale Street Loft Firm: Aidlin Darling Design, San Francisco, CA 2004: Redwood Empire AIA Honor Award – Sonoma Education: University of Cincinnati, Bachelor of Vineyard Caretaker’s Residence Architecture 2005: Northern California IIDA Honor Award – Sonoma Vineyard Estate Affiliations: 2009: Residential Architect Design Awards, Grand Award – • American Institute of Architects Member, San Francisco Mission Loft Chapter 2010: Northern California IIDA Honor Award – Wexler’s • International Interior Design Association, Northern 2011: • James Beard Award Winner for Outstanding California Chapter Restaurant Design – Bar Agricole • American Society of Landscape Architects • Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture • Member of the James Beard Foundation Design Awards Award Winner – Bar Agricole Committee • National IIDA Interior Design Competition Major awards: Winner, Hospitality/Retail – Bar Agricole Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 2005: Northern California IIDA Honor Award – Sonoma 2012: The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre Vineyard Estate Green Good Design Award – 355 11th Street 2006: Redwood Empire AIA Honor Award – Sonoma 2013: • Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Vineyard Barn Award Winner – Firm Award Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 2 Alberto Alfonso: A Search for the Soul Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 2 011 A Search for the Soul Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

A concept watercolor to explore the historical references of the landscape at Streamsong Resort and to situate the architecture in relationship with the natural elements 012 Chapter 2 Alberto Alfonso

For Alberto Alfonso, the architect’s sketch is a family affair.

He learned to draw from his father, a Cuban-born modernist who once introduced Walter Gropius to the University of Havana, who re-booted that school from Beaux Arts to Bauhaus, and whose building designs were prized by both the Castro government and the Italians who built the island’s casinos.

That would all be short-lived, however. In 1960, Carlos Alfonso gathered up his family and fled the island nation. He took with him two assets: ten dollars in cash, and his skill with a pencil.

They started anew in Tampa. “We’re Americans now,” he would tell his three sons. “We’re not going back.” By 1963, he was awarded the commission to redesign Tampa International Airport; his drawings helped seal the deal.

“He had incredible hands, and that’s why he was chosen,” Alfonso says of the man who in 1988 established Alfonso Architects with two of his sons. “When I was young, he and I would draw together – I’d be drawing baseball players out of books, and he’d sit down and sketch a face in about twenty minutes. He said that if you can draw hands and feet, then you’ve arrived.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Alberto E. Alfonso, AIA: Founding Principal and President, Alfonso His father taught him how to see when he draws, and shared Architects. Photo by Al Hurley with him the mechanics of holding a pencil as well as the nuances of shade, shadow, and line weight. “I learned how he Leonardo da Vinci and John Lennon, he believes, were prime used drawing as a process,” he says. “Now I can’t go to dinner examples of restless minds seeking the soul of a work – without taking a Moleskine pad.” whether painting or music – and quickly moving along to another search. Lennon often got to the heart of a song Today it’s part of the 55-year-old architect’s persona. “It quicker than Paul McCartney or the other Beatles. He’d lose connects me to my past, but there’s a meditative quality to it interest and move on. Da Vinci would become bored halfway too,” he says. “When you travel and sketch, you kind of own through a painting, then leave it once he’d found his solution. the things you’re drawing. You store them in a part of your brain, and you can reference them. Once you’ve captured “It’s a matter of getting what you need to know,” he says. their essence, you can move on.” “Once you get there, you don’t have to finish it. You can Chapter 2 013 A Search for the Soul

A drawing that represents an exploration of the Streamsong Resort spa, created in a grotto environment with seven pools nestled A preliminary drawing to study the relationship between the among “petrified” concrete tree columns natural bodies of water and the main lobby at Streamsong Resort. Compositionally and metaphorically the lobby is tethered to the body of water, like a boat to the bank. move on to the next investigation. But if you don’t draw it, you don’t own it.”

He puts pencil to paper only after considerable thought and reflection. “The hand is the direct translator of the mind,” he says. “The act of drawing then informs the mind, and the ownership of the idea occurs. From there you can leap to the next evolution.”

Finding computers antiseptic, he’s highly selective about when and how they’re used. “The exactness of the computer image bypasses that fragile, crucial stage in the life of a project, where its soul is born,” he says. “The patient search that Le Corbusier referred to isn’t possible using the computer alone.” A preliminary sketch for Streamsong Resort to study the perspective and climate challenges of the rooftop bar. Geometries were Alfonso will draw and test, then build a model – often combined to capture the 360-degree view of the horizon. returning and circulating in an editing process he calls a loop. But it all starts with a rough sketch. the scheme and the solution that everything else has to resonate off of.” “My process is always to tuck the problem away and resist Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 putting pencil to paper. Then I slowly begin, in a vague, fragile The computer can offer two advantages. Once the parti place of uncertainty where anything is possible,” he says. “The is established, it can expedite precise investigations that patient search continues from ambiguity to precision.” re-inform back to the tactile. “The danger in that is if used alone, a flattening occurs, and the mind stops being a joint Like Louis Kahn, he believes in the measurable and the participant,” he says. immeasurable – in the scientist and the poet – as essential in establishing a deliberate order from the outset. And it’s a communication tool. “I always supplement my presentations with drawings and wood models,” he says. “The “To stay in that immeasurable, vague, poetic place as long as clients always gravitate towards the tactile and participatory. possible, before jumping to the measurable, is crucial in the Their minds see more.” process,” he says. “You get what you need to know – first the material, then the spatial relationship, and then a concept He sketches with clients in three dimensions – to help them sketch. What’s left is the heart of the project, the parti. It’s see, to exchange information, and to form bonds. “When I 014 Chapter 2 Alberto Alfonso

A watercolor study for Streamsong Resort painted during the early phase of design investigation

A preliminary watercolor sketch for Streamsong Resort, concentrating on landscape and perspective The finished exterior of the main resort at Streamsong, capturing draw with a client, two things happen,” he says. “First, there’s the vertical building strategy originally devised in the concept watercolor. Photo by Al Hurley a natural transfer of authority to the designer, and that’s healthy. And the client becomes a partner – the creation is no longer a static process, and they’re participants in real across the bank. And then there was this sectional idea of time.” Florida under water.”

Alfonso put that process to a major test in 2009 when the Suppose, he reasoned, the design could represent a cross- Mosaic Company in Florida challenged him to create a resort section of the site, with roots below the surface, the lake’s edge from 250 acres on a reclaimed phosphorus mining site in the above, and tree canopy in the sky? Further, suppose the hotel center of the state. It was to be called Streamsong Resort. rooms became the canopy, and the rooftop were higher still?

His design is an Aalto-esque organic curvature of lines, “It gave me a strategy for moving forward in a rational way,” inspired by a landscape without grid or building context. he says. Instead it’s covered in 100-foot-tall phosphorous dunes, reclaimed by nature. Nearby is a huge, bass-filled lake, with Indeed. The new resort is 300,000 square feet, with more Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 dinosaur bones and sharks’ teeth embedded ashore. than 200 rooms in the main lodge, twelve rooms in a golf clubhouse, a full-service spa, three restaurants, and an He took his initial cues from the scars left by the phosphorus 18,500-square-foot conference center. A rooftop bar, mining. “The first impression that struck me was this organic 150 feet high, offers views of sunrises, sunsets, and much line because of the way it was mined, one that’s moving in of the Milky Way. both the X and Y directions,” he says. “It’s flat on the banks, and up and down on the dunes created by mining the largest It all started with his eyes, with his coveted Caran d’ache concentration of phosphate in America.” Swiss mechanical pencil, and with an ordinary Moleskine pad.

Then he looked to nature. “Sketching led to the evolution of the idea,” he says. “And it took me to the end, as far as the strategy was concerned.” “I drew a lot of the banks, and tried to pull the geometries in,” he says. “Some sketches led to idea of a tree that fell In other words, it helped him seal the deal. Chapter 2 015 A Search for the Soul

Name: Alberto Alfonso, AIA 2006: American Institute of Architects, State of Florida Honor Award of Excellence, Tampa International Firm: Alfonso Architects, Tampa, FL Airport Education: M.A., 1983, the University of Florida 2007: American Institute of Architects, Tampa Bay Chapter Firm of the Year Award Major awards: 40 design awards through 2012, including 2008: American Design Honor Award the H. Dean Rowe, FAIA Award for Design Excellence, won 2010: American Institute of Architects, State of Florida three times. Some specific awards include the following: Design Awards, Award of Excellence, Tampa 1987: American Institute of Architects, Florida Central Covenant Church Chapter Eduardo Garcia Award, Excellence in 2011: Archdaily Building of the Year, Religious Category Architectural Design Winner, Tampa Covenant Church 1997, 2005, 2011: American Institute of Architects, H. Dean Rowe, FAIA Award for Design Excellence 2005: American Institute of Architects, State of Florida Honor Award of Excellence, Nielsen Media Research Phase II – Oldsmar, Florida Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 3 Deborah Berke: A Tool for Thinking Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 3 019 A Tool for Thinking Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Intense carbon black pigment stick on craft paper. Deborah Berke 020 Chapter 3 Deborah Berke

“It’s interesting from an acoustic standpoint,” she says. “We had to isolate the sound from one room to another, but within each, the sound had to be very good – so there were two different, simultaneous acoustic mandates for each teaching studio.”

Excruciatingly well-thought out, the building began life as a meandering line on a page.

“I don’t really draw with an uncanny, architect-y hand that assembles the building in perspective,” she says. “My drawing tends to be not about the building literally, as much as it is about letting my mind wander.”

Deborah Berke. Photo by Winnie Au

The New York firm that bears her name may be best known for its 21C Museum Hotels in Louisville, Cincinnati, and Bentonville, but when Deborah Berke starts to talk about drawing, it’s the new music conservatory at Bard College that’s top-of-mind. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 “I started on it the way I do with everything,” she says. “I walk the site, come back to the office, pull out a pad of paper, and start mucking around.”

With her favorite No. 2 pencil, she’ll begin working through forms, assessing the site, and looking for solutions.

The conservatory called for a total of 20,000 square feet, to house a small performance space with flexible seating – along with a series of private studios for teaching and rehearsals. The best possible sound quality was an essential element, so that a flautist could perform in one studio while a violinist played in another and a pianist in still another. Intense carbon black pigment stick on craft paper. Deborah Berke Chapter 3 021 A Tool for Thinking

From initial sketches she’ll move to abstract drawings with thick, black wax sticks, developing plans, sections and elevations all at once. “I tend to express it all in different slices as I sketch,” she says.

Then she’ll head to a whiteboard wall in a conference room, and a meeting with her partners. “One of them has the gift of showing the big view from the mountaintop,” she says. “I don’t have that.”

Then comes the team meeting – the kind she likes, where everyone participating has a pencil in their hand. Berke may be the first to sketch, but as an idea takes shape, more and more people get involved with drawings and models of their own. “It goes from a partner and me to a team, where we sit at a table with a roll of trace, and draw on top of each other,” she says. “It’s a collective activity – I don’t pretend to have all the ideas.” László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory at Bard College: conceptual sketch of entry, intense carbon black pigment stick on craft paper. Spontaneity is de rigueur in their moving, thinking, Deborah Berke visualizing process that feels completely natural to all involved. “It’s a mystery, but not magic,” she says. “It defies being reduced to a series of steps because too much of it is simultaneous.”

She’s been drawing her entire life. Her mother, now 92, was a fashion designer who studied at Parsons in the 1940s. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Berke grew up with a house filled with paper and pencils on nearly every horizontal surface. “When I was a kid she’d tell us stories and draw while she talked,” she says. “One of the reasons my drawings are so reductive is that I could not compete with her skills as an illustrator.” László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory at Bard College: early elevation study sketches, black pentel marker on craft paper. Deborah Berke Berke attended New York City public schools, a girls’ boarding school, and the Rhode Island School of Design to study architecture. There, she found a strong emphasis She graduated in the middle of a recession, found her first job on drawing – at the time, each freshman was required to as a graphic designer for an engineering firm, then opened up take a course in drawing from nature. “There were detailed her practice and paired it with teaching to support herself. drawings in ink and color – mostly leaves and rocks,” Today she still teaches, and encourages her students to draw. she says. But she doesn’t insist on it. She’d rather transform them 022 Chapter 3 Deborah Berke

László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory at Bard College: cladding study, black pentel marker, pencil and white-out on photocopy. Deborah László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory at Bard College: cladding study, Berke black pentel marker, pencil and white-out on photocopy. Deborah Berke

into the best possible critics of their own work, whatever the wall. “I don’t need to put myself out there as an entertainer,” medium they elect to work in. she says.

“I tend to think that anyone destined to be an architect Drawing is a tool for thinking, she says, and one that requires should have a pencil at the end of their arm – but that can be discipline and a schedule. a mouse, too,” she says. “The point is not what you’re making a mark with but that you’re making a mark, and that you can “Making that time and making sure it’s protected is the most look at it and be critical and change it. You have to be able important part,” she says. “Whether you’re closing the door to see it.” alone or with a group of people around a table, you need to Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 make sure that you do it – you wake up early, you stay up late, The issue is not the pencil, but the creative process of how or you put it on the calendar like going to the gym.” an object or a space is shaped by the designer. “I don’t care what the vehicle is that gets the line on the page – it could Otherwise, there’d be no architecture. “Not every drawing be a piece of fabric off a skirt, simply because you like the I do becomes a building, but every building starts with a wrinkle,” she says. “I do insist that they create visual things, drawing,” she says. “Absolutely – every building I do.” and I don’t want to hear them just spout off words.” Even the quiet ones, like the music conservatory at Bard She doesn’t often draw with clients, and when she does it’s College. likely to be in an explanatory way on the firm’s whiteboard Chapter 3 023 A Tool for Thinking Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

The László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building at Bard College, Anndale-on-Hudson, New York. Photo by Chris Cooper 024 Chapter 3 Deborah Berke

Name: Deborah Berke, FAIA, LEED AP • University of California, Berkeley • University of Maryland Firm: Deborah Berke Partners, New York • Rhode Island School of Design Education: • University of Miami • The Rhode Island School of Design – Bachelor of Fine • The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies Arts; Bachelor of Architecture; Honorary Doctor of Fine Professional honors and service (selected): Arts • Founding Trustee, The Design Trust for Public Space, • The City University of New York – Master of Urban 1997–2012 Planning in Urban Design • Chair, Buell Center for the Study of American Awards (selected): Architecture, 1998–2004 2007: AIANYS Design Awards, Excellence for Historic • Board of Trustees, National Building Museum, Preservation/Adaptive Reuse, 21c Museum Hotel 2004–2011 Louisville • Board of Directors, Forum for Urban Design, since 2009: • AIANYS Design Awards, Award of Merit, 2008 Marianne Boesky Gallery • Founding Board Member, desigNYC, since 2009 • AIANY Design Awards, Merit Award for Projects (selected): Architecture, Irwin Union Bank • 432 Park Avenue, New York 2011: AIA Kentucky Design Awards, Honor Award, 21c • 122 Community Center, New York Museum Hotel Louisville • The László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building, Annandale- 2012: • SARA New York Council Design Awards, Award on-Hudson, NY of Excellence, 48 Bond Street • 21c Museum Hotel Bentonville; Bentonville, AR • Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and • 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati; Cincinnati, OH Prize, University of California, Berkeley • 21c Museum Hotel Louisville; Louisville, KY 2013: Urban Land Institute, Global Award of Excellence, • 48 Bond Street, New York 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati • Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York 2014: Historic Districts Council Design Awards, Honorable • Irwin Union Bank, Columbus, IN Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Mention, 48 Bond Street • Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT Academic appointments: • Private residences throughout the US and • Professor (Adjunct) Architectural Design, Yale University the Caribbean (since 1987) Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 4 Marlon Blackwell: The Thinking Drawing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 4 027 The Thinking Drawing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Conceptual sketch of west elevation of the addition to the Steven L. Anderson Design Center, at the University of Arkansas’ School of Architecture; graphite pencil sketch. Courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect 028 Chapter 4 Marlon Blackwell

Each of Marlon Blackwell’s projects starts with yellow trace paper and a big, chunky pencil loaded with super-soft graphite.

The results? Thinking drawings that are important not for how they look, but for how they’re understood.

“The softer the medium, the better,” says the head of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and founder of Marlon Blackwell Architect. “There’s the tonal value, the push and pull onto the page, and then away from it. You’re creating a spatial structure that can be read in a variety of ways.” Marlon Blackwell. Courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect For him, drawing is a means of measuring and tracking ideas and tactics. Like his Saint Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church in Springdale, Arkansas. There, he designed a building with “If the design doesn’t support the initial gesture in the end, red light streaming down from a skylit tower into a transitory it’s not going to be helpful,” he says. “The biggest challenge space between sanctuary and narthex. For the symbolic for architects is to hold the design development to the initial dome – a must for any Antiochian Orthodox church design – expressive gesture.” he installed a used satellite dish, inverted on the structure’s roof. He acquired the dish from a steel fabricator living in a An architect’s marks on a page may be important, but nearby Mountainburg, Arkansas mobile home, in exchange equally valuable is the evidence of their absence. Part of the for a few cases of beer. purpose of drawing is to understand, appreciate, and value that evidence, in the same way a musician might. “It’s like “It’s about what we find locally that may speak to us in a more Keith Richards – there are chords and there are the spaces universal way,” he says. “You need to be an attentive observer Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 between chords,” he says. “That’s why they’re called riffs – of the things around you – of a culture that’s man-made but they’re not continued and uninterrupted. Drawing to me is also one that’s nature-made. It’s about the micro and the like riffs.” macro and how they’re brought to the surface.”

His own riffs have led to insightful, even incisive designs. Drawing, he says, is a direct way to achieve that, first, by comprehending and communicating what he’s thinking to Blackwell’s architecture is about understanding the soft himself – and then, by expressing it to others. under belly of place. By probing carefully beneath a project’s surface, he’ll transform what he finds into something new – “It’s the primary means by which I can take the madness with a spiritual or even metaphysical twist. His buildings may that’s inside my head, and begin to tame it on paper, like look eccentric at first blush, but a closer examination will a symphony conductor,” he says. “It’s fun – it deals with reveal a wry and thoughtful commentary on the world they similarity and variability and situational opportunities. inhabit. Drawing always fits in.” Chapter 4 029 The Thinking Drawing

While a computer is not necessarily helpful to him when it comes to drawing, the 57-year-old Blackwell believes it does provide an entirely new set of techniques for the architect. It’s a time-saver when it comes to technical drawings, but not a substitute for the sketch. When talking about the craft of drawing, he tells his students that a really great computer drawing and a really great hand drawing take about the same amount of time to execute.

“I love the precision of the digital, the way you can test possibilities fairly quickly when it comes to lighting or interiors – so there are some advantages to it,” he says. “But Pen sketch over computer line drawing from Revit and plan sketch. it has its limitations, so it’s important to mix up the hand and Courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect the digital – and then things get more interesting.” new generation of dimensionally challenged students – some suffering from what Blackwell calls a “three-dimension spatial Indeed, he tells staff members at his office that they’re deficit disorder.” expected to engage in both drawing techniques as a way to communicate. It makes for a more resilient architect, he “It happens a lot in the digital design process when students believes. design one elevation at a time, because they’re not able to visualize it three-dimensionally in their heads,” he says. “My generation is about charcoal, wash, pencil, and ink on Mylar – and wanting to try things out with them, to test,” One technology he won’t tolerate, in either his office or at he says. “But a lot of schools have given up on that because the school of architecture, is common, facet-based modeling they have lost sight of the value of drawing and are impatient software, like SketchUp, that essentially uses a computer to with the ‘apparent slowness’ of the hand.” That’s resulted in a make a sketch. “I sit on the architectural review board at the University of Arkansas, and if I see a design firm use it in a presentation, I immediately think they just want the money – Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 that they don’t have a fidelity to craft and thought,” he says. “It says that you’re not willing to invest the time to make really great drawings – hand or digital.”

His issue is not with the nature of the software, but with the attitude of those entrusted with the quality of their built environment. “Architects need to put purpose before profit – to get their priorities straight,” he says. “If we’ve discovered what our purpose is, then we can validate our value to society – and raise the public’s expectation for design.”

Perspective sketches of addition over massing study with plan He and his firm, along with Associate Architect Polk Stanley studies. Courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect Wilcox Architects, achieved that in 2012, when they 030 Chapter 4 Marlon Blackwell

Graphite pencil axon. Courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect

my iPhone and he insightfully observed that the building form had a material logic problem – that what I wanted it to be wasn’t working because I was working against what it needed to be.”

Pen plan and perspective. Courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect Why not, MacKay-Lyons suggested, make the building what it wanted to be?

“So I redrew it on a napkin, photographed it, texted it back to the office, where they redrew and rendered it and sent it back to me,” he says.

The result is a critically acclaimed addition to a classical Beaux Arts building – one that does not imitate its predecessor but that relates back to it in a striking, 21st-century way.

“The DNA of the old is in the DNA of the new,” he says. “And a lot of that’s captured in the drawings and the model. The design drawings were done back and forth Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Axonometric section study of programmatic distribution; pen sketch over computer line drawing from Revit, with colored pencil accents. between soft pencils and yellow trace and BIM modeling. Jonathan Boelkins We did analytical diagrams illustrating relationships between the old and new – an instructive set to show the university created the 37,000-square-foot Steven L. Anderson Design that the renovation to the existing building and the new Center, an addition to the renovation Vol Walker Hall at the addition was a didactic opportunity for our students to University of Arkansas’ School of Architecture. The addition learn the varieties of ways we design and build in the last began with a series of drawings that were aided in the design hundred years.” process by 21st-century technology, while Blackwell and fellow architect Brian MacKay-Lyons were vacationing in the They were thinking drawings, important not because of how Galapagos Islands: they looked – but because they conveyed an understanding of a gifted architect’s intent. “The scheme went through a series of permutations,” Blackwell says. “I showed Brian a few digital renderings on Chapter 4 031 The Thinking Drawing

Renderings of massing iterations and perspective sketches of addition: computer rendering iterations using Revit, 3DStudio Max, Maxwell Render, & Photoshop (left); key transitional sketches in graphite pencil in sketchbook. Courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Southwest corner of elevation at dusk. Photo by Tim Hursley 032 Chapter 4 Marlon Blackwell

Name: Marlon Blackwell his work entitled An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell, published by Princeton Architectural Press Firm: Marlon Blackwell Architect, Fayetteville, AK in 2005. Blackwell was selected by The International Design Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, is a practicing architect in Magazine, in 2006, as one of the ID Forty: Undersung Heroes, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and serves as Distinguished and as an “Emerging Voice” in 1998 by the Architectural Professor and Department Head in the Fay Jones School League of New York. of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. Working At the University of Arkansas he has co-taught design studios outside the architectural mainstream, his architecture is with Peter Eisenman (1997, 1998), Christopher Risher based in design strategies that draw upon vernaculars and (2000) and Julie Snow (2003), and was most recently the the contradictions of place; strategies that seek to transgress George Baird Professor at Cornell University (Fall 2012). conventional boundaries for architecture. Work produced Other visiting academic appointments include the Thomas in his professional office, Marlon Blackwell Architect, Jefferson Professor at the University of Virginia (Spring has received recognition with numerous national and 2011), the Eliel Saarinen Visiting Professor at the University international design awards and significant publication of Michigan (Fall 2009), the Ivan Smith Distinguished in books, architectural journals and magazines. The Professor at the University of Florida (Spring 2009), the Paul office of Marlon Blackwell Architect was recognized as Rudolph Visiting Professor at Auburn University (Spring the Firm of the Year by Residential Architect magazine in 2008), the Cameron Visiting Professor at Middlebury College 2011. Recent honors include the Saint Nicholas Eastern (Fall 2007), the Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor Orthodox Church (Springdale, Arkansas) winning a 2013 at Washington University in St. Louis (Spring 2003), and AIA National Honor Award and the 2011 Civic and Visiting Graduate Professor at MIT (Spring 2001 and 2002). Community Building category at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain. The IMA Ruth Lilly Visitor’s In 1994, he co-founded the University of Arkansas Mexico Pavilion (Indianapolis, IN) also received an AIA National Summer Urban Studio, and has coordinated and taught in Honor Award in 2012. the program at the Casa Luis Barragan in Mexico City since 1996. He received his undergraduate degree from Auburn The significance of his contributions to design is evidenced University in 1980 and a M. Arch II degree from Syracuse by the 2012 Architecture Prize from the American Academy University in Florence in 1991. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 of Arts and Letters, and the publication of a monograph of Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 5 Peter Bohlin: Drawing for Pleasure Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 5 035 Drawing for Pleasure Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Apple’s compelling Cube and Plaza transform this urban place and draw people down to the sunlit space below. Photo by Peter Aaron/OTTO 036 Chapter 5 Peter Bohlin

Early conceptual sketch of the 32-foot glass cube that is both an entrance and iconographic symbol

Peter Bohlin. Photo by Nick Lehoux

Peter Bohlin comes by his love for drawing naturally.

“My father made pencils for Eberhard Faber,” he says. “He delivered them as a young man – when he was just out of Pratt – to architects like Hugh Ferris and Raymond Hood.”

The fact is, Eric Bohlin wasn’t just a pencil maker. Or a delivery man. He was president of Eberhard Faber from 1963 until 1972. His company enjoyed a stellar reputation as makers of one of the nation’s favorite brands of pencils, until its acquisition by Faber Castell in 1987. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Not surprisingly, the elder Bohlin showed his son how to draw as a child. Conceptual sketch of the cube positioned in the center of General Motors Plaza “He’d be disappointed in me for using this Japanese pencil,” he says about the red ITO-YA that he, like his friend Jim Cutler, favors over all others. “But it’s more like drawing with Washington State, for an astonishing series of Apple Stores air – the lead is just about right, and the eraser is extremely on New York’s Fifth Avenue and around the world, and for sensitive. I love the lead and the weight.” a number of sensitive and transparent residences snugged delicately into their sites. Among his public projects are A 2010 recipient of the AIA Gold Medal, Bohlin and the light-filled Grand Teton National Park’s Discovery and his cohorts at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson are known for Visitor Center in Jackson, WY, Seattle’s Ballard Library, and collaborating with Cutler on Bill Gates’ residence in the Newport Beach Civic Center. Chapter 5 037 Drawing for Pleasure

“When I was doing the sketches for the Tetons, I was It is also a source of self-discipline: “You’re causing yourself to thinking of the nature of that world and emphasizing think about the place and how to make things in that place, emotional qualities,” he says. “Drawing can do that – but and not get distracted by things that aren’t crucial,” he says. other tools have more difficulty with it.” “You’re thinking about how people might use the place. It’s an extension of yourself – and what bigger pleasure for an Like many architects, he believes that drawing offers a direct architect could there be than that?” link between brain and hand – and that a computer cannot match the nuances of each circumstance. Indeed, he believes And it’s a visual means to an end – a way for a designer to that a computer can adversely affect the way an architect hold onto the dream of what a building can be. The sketch reasons and visualizes. constantly reaches out for that dream, referring back to it as often as necessary. Moreover, once the project’s complete, all “When I draw there are parts that are clear, and some that I three entities – architect, drawing, and building – share the ghost – some you’re sure about and some you’re not yet sure finest kind of common bond. about, but with a computer, that’s difficult,” he says. “When you draw, there are connections between your brain and how “You feel great in the place you’ve made – and it relates back you’re communicating your thoughts.” to all the drawings,” he says. “Now and then you might be surprised by something, and that’s even better. It might be Eventually, he believes, computers may become more lighter or airier, or the bones might be very good, and that connected and capable of nuance, but that’s not true at was something that took a lot of thinking and sketching on the moment. “It hasn’t happened yet – but we do use the your part.” computer in the office a great deal.” He’s been drawing since he was in grade school, earning his Besides, the sketch provides him with a special kind of joy undergraduate degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that a computer cannot touch. “Drawing is such a pleasure,” in 1958, and his Master’s from Cranbrook Academy of Art he says. “I think getting at the nature of things is the essential in 1961. All along the way, he drew and drew, consciously spirit of the act – and for me it’s often an emotional issue as and deliberately developing a style that he could call his well as a sensible one.”

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 own.

Waipolu Gallery and Studio, Hawaii: section through the gallery showing how the form of the gallery captures views of both Diamond Head and the sea 038 Chapter 5 Peter Bohlin

The contrasting forms of the gallery and studio buildings reflect the nature of their use and respond to the extraordinary site. Photo by Nic Lehoux

Conceptual sketch looking across the terrace at the north end of the gallery with its great tilted window

“As you become more of an architect, you get at things more crucial and personal to you – and what could be more personal than drawing?” he asks. “I worried at Cranbrook that my drawings were too stylized, and so I started to draw more like a child. My drawings now are simple, but quite spirited. I avoid drawings that have no root in making people, places, and things.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

He believes that the drawings an architect leaves behind can serve as roadmaps and guides to the thinking that led to finished projects. “You can look at Lou Kahn’s drawings and see his path, and it’s seemingly an inevitable answer, but then you realize that he looked at so many different ways of shaping a place,” he says.

With offices in Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, and San Francisco, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

currently employs about 185 architects. Most of them sketch. The house is positioned at the telling transition from dark evergreen Though some may be better than others, he believes it crucial to sunny deciduous forest. The sequence of approach, entry, and that they all understand the craft. discovery has been thoughtfully manipulated. Chapter 5 039 Drawing for Pleasure

Lifted above the existing forest floor of boulders and ferns, the house’s basic shed form opens to the winter morning sun while being shaded by a large maple from the hot summer sun. Air moves easily through the house.

“It’s important to learn, each of us in our own way,” he says. “It’s so well rooted in the nature of people and place, in the immediate environment and climate, in how the land tilts, where the sun is and where the wind is coming from. It’s about the nature of putting buildings together – and how they Seen from the northwest at dusk, the house is raised above the speak to themselves. I value it greatly.” boulder-strewn landscape on concrete piers. Three piers are painted red where they extend to support upper elements. These red columns also mark the progression through the house from As did his former partner, Bernard Cywinski, who passed Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 approach to the tall glazed living space. Thomas Arch, Photo away in 2011. Cywinski favored a mechanical pencil, using 1998–2004 very thin lead to sketch his designs for projects like the Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia. It’s a building that, like much of Bohlin’s work, is glass-clad and transparent, designed 1975/1976, when he designed a retreat for his parents in the to admit as much natural light as possible. Connecticut woods. There, the Forest House floats above a field of boulders in a lush green forest. Its design is simplicity “We all learn to love the tools that we work with, and in my itself, and its materials are modest: red industrial glazing for case and Bernie’s it’s a matter of what we draw with,” he says. floor-to-ceiling windows that open out to the woods, gray “He told me just before he died that what he would miss most insect screening to keep the bugs out, and a roof of wavy, was drawing.” corrugated aluminum.

If Bohlin ever felt indebted to his father, the pencil maker Chances are, it all started with a sketch. who taught him how to draw, he paid him off in spades during 040 Chapter 5 Peter Bohlin

Name: Peter Q. Bohlin FAIA 1999: AIA National Honor Award, Carnegie Melon University Intelligent Workplace Firm: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson – Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, 2004: AIA National Honor Award, Point House PA, Seattle, WA, San Francisco, CA 2005: AIA Top Ten Green Projects, The Barn at Education: Fallingwater • Bachelor of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic 2006: • Honorary Doctorate of Arts, Rensselaer Institute, 1959 Polytechnic Institute • Master of Architecture, Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1961 • AIA National Honor Award for Design, Ballard Library and Neighborhood Service Center Major awards: More than 550 national and international 2007: AIA Top Ten Green Projects, Ballard Library and design awards, including nine National Honor awards: Neighborhood Service Center 1981: AIA National Honor Award, Gaffney House 2008: • AIA Top Ten Green Projects, Pocono 1984: AIA National Honor Award, Shelly Ridge Girl Scouts Environmental Education Center Center • Medal of Distinction, AIA Pennsylvania 1990: AIA National Honor Award, Carnegie Melon 2010: AIA Gold Medal Recipient University Software Engineering Institute 2013: Good Design is Good Business Lifetime Achievement 1994: AIA Firm Award Award 1996: AIA National Honor Award, Ledge House 1997: AIA National Honor Award, Pacific Rim Estate Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 6 Warren Byrd: The Collaborative Sketch Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 6 043 The Collaborative Sketch

1992. And here, in Charlottesville, he set up his landscape architecture practice in 1985.

His career – one that started early with a distinct talent for drawing – seems to have fit together as seamlessly as Jefferson’s work on the Lawn, the Range, and the Rotunda.

“My great fortune lay in finding a school where I went as a graduate student, one that had a school of architecture that included landscape architecture and planning,” Byrd, now a Professor Emeritus, says. “I do pride myself on the fact that all those years of teaching, between 1979 and 2004, were terrific opportunities for collaboration – with my architecture colleagues in particular.”

He taught several courses in drawing there, along with others in watercolor, planting design, and site planning. And because he could sketch so well, he was often dispatched to Italy for six to eight weeks to teach American students Warren Byrd, FASLA. Photo by Giuliano Correia how to draw there. “It was in Vicenza, a great springboard for Palladian architecture,” he says. “It was a field-based There’s probably no more idyllic and inspired place in program, where we’d see the sights, analyze them, and draw the United States to teach, study, and practice the art of them.” landscape architecture than in and around the grounds of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Byrd had begun drawing when he was 8 years old, and continued all the way through high school and college. He Jefferson’s Palladian scheme at U. Va. is famously successful still draws daily, a practice he began in 1975, mostly for Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 for marrying a red-brick Rotunda with ten classical Pavilions projects he’s working on, with a weekly sketch or watercolor and as many formal gardens tucked behind serpentine in his journal. “I’ve got my 10,000 hours in, as Malcolm walls. It’s all layered into a verdant, terraced landscape Gladwell would say,” he says. that stretches southwest toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. Overlooking the University from a mountaintop a few miles To refine his students’ coordination from mind to eye to east is Monticello, the architect’s lifelong labor of love. And paper, he’d teach them how to construct a perspective from a 90-minute drive south leads to his final masterpiece near a plan. “I tried to get them to think in three-dimensional Lynchburg: the octagonal retreat he called Poplar Forest. terms as they were conceiving the project, and in perspective as they were working through it,” he says. “That’s the best Here, at U. Va., landscape architect Warren Byrd earned way, not just in plan and section. There’s nothing worse than his graduate degree. Here, he taught more than a thousand working on presentation renderings, and at the eleventh students, eventually serving as chair of the Department hour discovering a flaw in the plan and not have time to of Landscape Architecture for seven years, from 1986 to correct it.” 044 Chapter 6 Warren Byrd

Early perspective of the Traverse and East Pavilion from museum court, Campbell Hall, University of Virginia. Pencil and prismacolor drawn on top of SketchUp framework provided by SMBW Architects circa 2001/2002

In drawing, he believes that less is indeed more. “The best That would be followed by day trips to the waterfalls drawings in my mind are about what you leave out, rather and landscapes of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the than what you put in,” he says. “I used to insist that my Shenandoah National Park, or field trips to Asheville and students couldn’t use an eraser. I wanted them to concentrate, Frederick Law Olmsted’s work at Biltmore Estate, or to the so that when they put a line down they mean something.” monuments of Washington, D.C.

One of the most important goals for drawing by hand, he “We did that so they could draw all the different concepts that would tell them, is not just to become an architect or a they might run into as a designer – to keep a record, but to landscape architect, but to become better observers of the be analytical,” he says. “It’s not just about perspectives, but to world around them. embed information in your head – that reflecting pool is this long and this wide, or you can stand on the Lincoln Memorial “I wanted them to go beyond the core, and more keenly steps and see this much of the Washington Monument.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 record the world,” he says. “It gives you a language to document the kinds of design work that you do. He calls it a wonderful experience to be able go back to It’s very first-hand, analytical and critical – not to copy, his sketchbook over time, confirming initial thoughts and but to record some value in what you’re looking at and feelings about the subject of a drawing. In essence, it’s a seeing.” self-driven conversation that a designer can carry on during a lifetime of sketching. “In your later work you’re drawing It certainly doesn’t hurt to be surrounded by some of on earlier ideas,” he says. “It’s a kind of building on ideas the nation’s most beautiful landscapes, with many of you’ve explored earlier – freehand drawing allows you to layer its monumental memorials within a day’s drive. Byrd’s something on top of another sketch.” U. Va. drawing classes would start out on site at the Lawn, for lessons in perspectives from both buildings and For him, it’s also a means of working out solutions with trees. They’d move into downtown Charlottesville for others. He’ll develop the initial drawing, hand it off to its 19th-century streetscapes, parks, and neighborhoods. someone at the office, they’ll come back with suggestions, and Chapter 6 045 The Collaborative Sketch

Perspective through alley to upper terrace (looking west). Pencil, prismacolor, SketchUp base circa 2001/2002

he’ll work on top of that. “It’s important not to be afraid to “But the foundational value of eye–hand–mind connections have people interpret your drawings, and to have them not be is really kind of irreplaceable. There’s a design inspiration that afraid,” he says. “You get fresh things out of that.” no technical computer can allow – it’s just not the same thing. Somehow, you need to strike the right balance.” That goes for clients too, particularly in public venues and community meetings, where Byrd will draw diagrammatically So where does the computer enter into his design process? as people begin to articulate their issues or areas of concern. “It’s moving ever-forward,” he says. “In 1985 we had no “You’re a medium – they’re going through you,” he says. computers of any sort. Then we reinvigorated the office in “You’re interpreting and guiding. It reflects what they’re 1995, when I stepped down from school, and began hiring.” saying, but it’s your interpretation.” Today, the firm continues to develop all conceptual drawings The result is a hybrid drawing of a multitude of ideas, by hand. At the point when a project takes on a definite interpreted publicly on paper by the designer. The direction, it starts to appear more thoroughly on the computer. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 community feels more a part of the process because of the And sometimes the firm’s plans, sections, and perspectives are artist’s ability to draw. And Byrd will take photos of the a combination of computer and hand drawing. diagrams and add them to his final presentation. “I’ve seen some very sophisticated hand drawings for “I’ve always enjoyed drawing on the fly,” he says. “It’s who presentation,” he says. “And even as advanced as software is we are and what we do as landscape architects, working to getting, we still see a lot of harshness that a hand can help to be contextual and arriving at the values the community is soften.” interested in. Believe it or not, it’s always a collaboration among many.” As the design profession moves forward with presentations developed in three and four dimensions and in film and He’s not opposed to using the computer for sketching, but video, Byrd embraces both computers and the hand-sketch. favors a balanced approach. “My opinion is that you ought to But he acknowledges a bias to the latter – and for good have both, that you shouldn’t give up digital drawing,” he says. reason. 046 Chapter 6 Warren Byrd

Early perspective of South Addition and south slope landscape (looking east). Pencil, prismacolor, SketchUp base circa 2001/2002

“I’m not trying to be nostalgic or a Luddite about it,” he says. “The best is yet to come, but as we get more sophisticated, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 we don’t want to neglect the fact there’s always value in drawing out the quality of a place through your hand and eye.”

And in collaborating with others as you do.

Preliminary perspective sketch of bioretention gardens (looking east). Pentel, prismacolor on white trace circa 2002 Chapter 6 047 The Collaborative Sketch Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Last in a series of sketches for view of bioretention garden on south side of Campbell Hall. 048 Chapter 6 Warren Byrd

View of completed bioretention gardens at Campbell Hall, looking east circa 2008/2009. Photo by NBW Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Name: Warren Byrd, FASLA have included an All-University teaching award, a CELA teaching award, and two Bradford Williams Medals for Firm: Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, articles published in Landscape Architecture magazine. Now Charlottesville, VA, New York, NY, and San Francisco, CA a Professor Emeritus, Byrd’s particular focus, in both his As founding principal of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape teaching and his practice, has been on the understanding Architects, Warren Byrd has led the firm in a wide range of and adaptation of natural systems and plant communities public and private landscape projects throughout the United as they might best influence sustainable strategies of design. States, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Brazil, Baja He received his B.S. in Horticulture from Virginia Tech Mexico, Antigua, Russia, and China. In addition to his in 1975 and his Master of Landscape Architecture from 30-plus years of practice, Warren taught for 26 years at the the University of Virginia in 1977. He is a Fellow of the University of Virginia, serving as chair of the Department American Society of Landscape Architects, and was recently of Landscape Architecture for seven years. His many honors awarded its highest award, the ASLA Medal. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 7 Ellen Cassilly: Talking and Sketching Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 7 051 Talking and Sketching

Let’s say you’re a freshly minted young architect, circa 1988, armed with an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M, and further bolstered by a graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Architecture.

Where do you go?

If you believe in yourself the way Ellen Cassilly does, you head straight for Paris, France.

And you talk yourself into a job in the office of the gifted French/Algerian architect Christian de Portzamparc. There, you start from the bottom and patiently work your way up to some very interesting designs.

“When I first got there, I ran the photocopy machine, colored within the lines, and made some models,” she says. “By the time I left after four years, I was an integral part of the office, working on a hotel, a project in Japan, and the Musée Bourdelle in Paris.

The only American in the office, she served as liaison with the Pritzker Prize Committee, for which de Portzamparc had been nominated.

“That’s why I say I put him over the top,” a puckish Cassilly says about the architect who was named 1994 Laureate of the Ellen Cassilly. Photo by Frank Konhaus Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize. engaged in a number of cutting-edge activities – including For much of her time in Paris, she was hand-drafting drawings moving architect George Matsumoto’s 1954 Poland/ for an office that was not yet using computers. “They were DeFeo House, a mid-century masterpiece threatened with all ink on vellum,” she says. “When you made a mistake, you demolition in 2002. had to pull out a little razor blade and take the ink off the top of the paper, but not the paper itself. It was very tedious, and With her husband, Frank Konhaus, she also brought an made one a very loose sketcher – and a very careful drafter.” internationally recognized artist, Georges Rouse, to Durham in 2006. There, he created 11 public art projects, all critically When she got back to the states, her experience in Paris acclaimed. helped land her a job in Raleigh, North Carolina with Frank Harmon’s office – before she eventually set up her own But she hangs her professional hat on a home she and her Durham-based practice in 1999. Along the way, she was husband designed and built in 2009. It’s sited in Chapel Hill 052 Chapter 7 Ellen Cassilly

on a bluff that overlooks a 1,600-acre forest, a small stream running along its edge, all of it owned by Duke University. ECA ELLEN-CASSItLT The couple merged their two surnames to form the home’s ARC-H-IT-EC tf,T fit M: 419 UO 11 tf, fit tf,W fitISO 1 H own, calling it Cassilhaus. M: 419 UO 11 tf, fit tf,W fitISO 1 H

The structure, featured in the New York Times shortly after its completion, is made up of three distinct components: a 2,400-square-foot residence for the couple, an 800-square- foot studio for visiting artists, and a 900-square-foot gallery that serves as a bridge to link the two.

Sketching the project in its early stages proved to be another kind of bridge – one that informed them from the outset of its design. “We could look at magazines and the Internet, but sketching was a way to interact,” she says. “It was about us Cassilhaus in relation to creek. Drawing by Ellen Cassilly talking and me sketching.”

Every Wednesday evening during its planning stages, the two would sit down and discuss a particular part of the home’s EGA ELLEN CASS1LLY design, talking while Ellen drew. Sections and details would ARCHITECTS Pt*»IB*»1U».FS»IBSM17ll be developed and refined later, in her office. Pt*»IB*»1U».FS»IBSM17ll

For example, there was the placement of a bathtub for the master suite, discussed during a pair of consecutive Wednesdays. They didn’t want it next to a wall because it would be difficult to clean – and there’d be no place for the requisite soap and shampoo or a relaxing cup of tea or glass Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 of wine. When Cassilly pulled it ten inches away from the wall in drawings, she also added an extruded shelf for those necessities and luxuries of life in the bath.

Cassilhaus basic concept. Drawing by Ellen Cassilly Cassilhaus gallery concepts. Drawing by Ellen Cassilly Chapter 7 053 Talking and Sketching

Cassilhaus, master bath. Drawing by Ellen Cassilly

“All of that was discussed in sketch form, looking at the tile pattern and faucets of a certain size,” she says. “Frank would say that the faucet wasn’t big enough, and then go on a marathon Internet quest to find a solution.”

Discussions over hand drawings would play an integral role in its detailed design. “If you were looking at just the elevation or plan, you wouldn’t get that third dimension you get in a sketch,” she says. “And in a small room like the bath, there’s so much going on with cabinetry, water, shower and floor – so Cassilhaus gallery concepts. Drawing by Ellen Cassilly much more there than any other room.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

And a truly powerful sketch, she says, encourages an architect “You can grab a pencil and turn to them and say: ‘You mean to return to it in the middle of design or construction, seeking like this?’” she says. out the intended direction as a project moves forward. “Sketches are important in getting to the truth,” she says. “And they’ll say: ‘Yes – this is amazing – I tell you what I “I’ve seen people get down to the nitty-gritty and say: ‘Oh, we want, and you sketch it!’ can’t do that!’ – and that’s why it’s important to go back and forth between concept sketches and CAD drawings.” “And I’ll say: ‘Yes! This is what I do!’”

Besides, she says, there’s nothing quite as impressive as All the while, she’ll have been looking them in the eyes, chatting with clients who are talking about their wants, drawing upside-down, and talking at the same time. It is, needs, and desires while they’re waving their hands all about she says, an interactive experience for the client – and an the room. inspired part of an architect’s life. 054 Chapter 7 Ellen Cassilly

Cassilhaus, bridge. Drawing by Ellen Cassilly

“It’s something that I think is just fabulous – I wouldn’t say But it’s the hand drawing that opens up the possibilities. sacred, but it is filled with spirit,” she says. “And they’re so quick – it only takes just three sketches to get clients to open “People get scared because construction costs a lot of money, up to you. It becomes a conversation, where on a computer, and design is expensive,” she says. “But when I can spend

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 it’s mumbo-jumbo, scribbling at 36 or 42 inches, and it’s not three minutes and they say ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it,’ as precious.” and then I can do another and they see that we’re getting closer to what they want, then they understand that I’m The computer is most useful after that initial sketch, when listening.” a design needs to be grounded in a floor plan based on real dimensions – when architect and client need to know what And that she believes in herself – and her capabilities as an windows will look like, inside and out, or where solar panels architect. might be placed. “The computer drawings keep informing us in a very precise way about adjustments to the floor plan,” she says. Chapter 7 055 Talking and Sketching

Cassilhaus, looking south, with snow. Photo by Frank Konhaus Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 056 Chapter 7 Ellen Cassilly

Name: Ellen Cassilly • Honorable Mention, Poland/DeFeo House, AIA Triangle Award in Preservation Firm: Ellen Cassilly Architect, Durham, NC 2005: • Merit Award, Poland/DeFeo House, North Education: Carolina AIA • Texas A&M, Bachelor’s in Environmental Design in • Merit Award, Pavilion in Durham Central Park, Architecture and Design, 1983 Golden Leaf Awards for Community Appearance, • University of Pennsylvania, Master’s in Architecture, Durham City-County Appearance Commission 1988 2007: • DDI Visionary Award, for the Georges Rouse Community Art Project given by Downtown Major awards: Durham Incorporated. 1998: Pyne Historic Preservation Award, Fowler’s Gourmet, • Indy Arts Award, for the Georges Rouse Historic Preservation Society of Durham Community Art Project given by the Independent 2003: Pyne Historic Preservation Award, Poland/DeFeo weekly newspaper. House, Historic Preservation Society of Durham 2012: The pavilion in Durham Central Park, Golden Leaf 2004: • Merit Award, Garden Study, Golden Leaf Awards Awards for Community Appearance, Durham City- for Community Appearance, Durham City-County County Appearance Commission Appearance Commission Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 8 James Cutler: The Externalization of Cognition Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 8 059 The Externalization of Cognition Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Connecticut Corporate Headquarters: looking south from lobby 060 Chapter 8 James Cutler

“Normally, I get a written program from them first. The client is one hundred percent in charge of the program, and I’m one hundred percent in charge of the design,” he says. “If I don’t fulfill their emotional or physical needs, then I fail. If they can’t afford to do it, then we have to cut back.”

Once the program’s in order, he’ll go out to survey the property personally, usually with client at his side. He’s famous for meticulously shooting the grades himself, and precisely appraising the entire landscape. Then he’ll bring all the raw data back to his office, and enter it into CAD.

Not until then does he pick up a pencil. His instrument of choice is a lightweight, red ITO-YA model from Japan. Its black eraser is applied with a peg, so the surfaces of pencil and eraser are the same plane, with no crimps or indentations. He says it’s the perfect pencil for him, and also for his friend, architect Peter Bohlin, with whom he collaborated on the design of Bill Gates’ house from 1988 to 1995.

“They’re really beautiful,” he says about his ITO-YAs. “Ten years ago I gave Peter a bunch of them for his birthday, and if you look at his AIA Gold Medal photo, he’s got four in his James Cutler, FAIA. Photo by Art Grice pocket.”

It’s late summer in 2013 on Bainbridge Island in Washington, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 and architect Jim Cutler is methodically ticking off the projects he’s currently working on, east to west, around the world:

“There’s a residence in St. Petersburg, Russia, another residence in northern Poland, and one or two houses outside Prague,” he says. “Then there’s the Greenwich, Connecticut project, and a corporate headquarters in Westport, then the Stowe residence, a campus retreat in southern Vermont, and a residence outside of northeastern Pennsylvania.”

He digresses briefly to talk about drawing, his associates, and the way he works with clients. ITO-YA pencil. Photo by James Cutler Chapter 8 061 The Externalization of Cognition

They can be a source of amusement, too. When Bohlin was recovering from knee surgery in the hospital a few years back, Cutler paid him a visit. “It was Halloween and I dressed up as a nine-foot pencil,” he says. “Peter was in bed, still so drugged out that he couldn’t say a word.”

For his clients, Cutler puts his ITO-YA to productive and prolific use, sitting down with program and site plan, and drawing extensively. “The first volume looks like a three-year-old’s squiggle,” he says. “I draw over and over on it. For the first meeting, I’ll do 25–30 drawings, and one will look viable and we’ll develop it. I work right up to the minute the client arrives, and I show all the drawings I’ve done.”

Connecticut Corporate Headquarters: view from auditorium He talks them through the process of drawing and design, guiding them through each step, and allowing them to guide him too. “I’ll say: ‘First I thought of this thing, and then it neurophysiologist from the University of Washington, who bifurcated,’ in a kind of stream of consciousness,” he says. paid a visit to the office. Berninger is well known for her “They can stop me and ask: ‘You went from here to there, research on elementary schoolchildren and their use of pens but why not to there?’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, I’ve already been and keyboards. She reviewed that with him. there before’ or, ‘I didn’t think of that – but I’ll try that next time.’ It keeps the client participating with me in the design “The ones that formed their letters when writing with their process. They’re actively engaged. If I show it as a finished hands were more prolific than those who chose their letters drawing, they’re not a part of it.” on the keyboard,” he says.

The person with the pencil is the one with the editorial For good reason, Berninger explained. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 control, he says. But in recent years he’s noted changes in how some use that pencil, mostly the designers fresh “The first thing she told me was that the brain is out of A-school who’ve come to work at Cutler Anderson evolutionary,” he says. “Over time, it’s gotten bigger, and as it Architects. It became problematic. does, each part takes on different functions.”

“I began to see a decline in the conceptual skills of my When architects conceive or create or synthesize younger designers,” he says. “When I was younger and they information, they’re using the upper-right side of their brains. were about my age, they could stay with me. But after about On its outer edge is the latest piece in its evolution – in a ten years, every employee had worse and worse conceptual limited quantity that’s called “working memory.” Some people skills. It really bothered me.” have more and some less, but all have a finite amount.

So he began his due diligence. One phone call led to “It’s where you process information,” he says. “So when you another, until he touched base with Virginia Berninger, a draw, you externalize what’s in your working memory, and you 062 Chapter 8 James Cutler

Connecticut Corporate Headquarters: public entry

free up more working memory because you have externalized The net result of his conversation with Berninger was it. My hard drive is the paper I draw on, and it frees up my an initiative to steer the firm’s younger associates toward memory to conceive more.” sketching with their hands. “I started having them go out and draw things,” he says. “I taught freehand drawing to them, That’s why Berninger chooses not to call the act of putting because drawing is an acquired skill, not a talent.” pencil to paper “drawing,” but prefers to use the phrase “externalization of cognition.” He’s got three pieces of advice for students considering a career in architecture. First: “You’ve got to draw,” he says. “If But there’s more to it than just the impact of drawing on there’s a five percent chance I’m right about our brains, why working memory. As it turns out, before the brain developed would you take the risk?” its capacity for language skills, it had already developed communication-by-hand skills. Also: “Take theology – because it’s the study of the abstract. Nothing about it is tangible. It’s all in the realm of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 “She told me that the part of your brain that governs the use conceptual, and it’s an invaluable tool for thinking abstractly. of hands is directly behind the working memory – and that Drawing is invaluable for thinking in a conceptual and conceptualization grew out of our hands,” he says. “She said: tangible way.” ‘How do we communicate? With our hands – it’s how we did it before we had language skills.’” Finally, there’s the reality that everyone is hard-wired differently – some to be architects, some to be doctors, and “I said: ‘That’s kind of shocking.’” others to be writers.

Berninger told him that when designers use keystrokes and “You can teach someone how to draw for conceptual a mouse, they’re using the back and left part of their brains, skills, but if you’re not wired to be an architect, you’re rather than the upper-right section where working memory not going to be an architect,” he says. “You’ve got to resides. “They’re not dumb, but they’re not using their hands find your fertile ground, as in the Christ parable of the to form and inform their designs,” Cutler says. sower. The recipe for total success is to be wired to be an Chapter 8 063 The Externalization of Cognition

Connecticut Corporate Headquarters: lobby

architect, combined with the tools and the rigor to succeed. But the most important tool is to draw – and to exercise those skills.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 After a pause, Jim Cutler resumes his list of ongoing projects – these, a little closer to home: “There’s the sustainability project in southwestern Colorado, the residence under construction in Seattle, and one south of Portland,” he says. “Here on this island, there’s a very large housing project with 87 residences, an almost pro-bono rowing club center, and the restoration of an historic 1920 residence by the famous architect Carl Gould – a great house and a fine example of early Seattle architecture.”

Connecticut Corporate Headquarters: external amphitheater Then he picks up his red ITO-YA and gets to work. 064 Chapter 8 James Cutler

Connecticut Corporate Headquarters: entry sequence cross-section

Name: James L. Cutler, FAIA • AIA Northwest Region Honor Award, Virginia Merrill Bloedel Education Center Firm: Cutler Anderson Architects, Bainbridge Island, WA 1996: AIA National Honor Award, Pacific Northwest Guest Education: House • Bachelor of Art, University of Pennsylvania – 1971 2000: AIA National Honor Award, Pine Forest Cabin • Master of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania – 1973 2001: • AIA National Honor Award, Maple Valley Library • Master of Architecture, Louis I. Kahn Masters Studio, • The Wood Design Awards, Honor Award, Maple University of Pennsylvania – 1974 Valley Library 2002: • Wood Design Awards, Honor Award, Reeve Major Awards: Residence More than 40 national, regional and local design awards, • AIA Seattle Chapter Honor Award, Reeve including six American Institute of Architects (AIA) Residence National Honor Awards: 2003: Interfaith Forum on Religions, Art & Architecture, 1986: AIA National Honor Award, Parker Residence Design Honor Award, Grace Episcopal Church 1989: AIA Merit Award Western Red Cedar Association, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 2004: The Wood Design Awards, Honor Award, Long The Bridge House Residence 1992: • AIA Seattle Chapter Honor Award, Virginia 2007–2008: • AIA Sunset magazine Western Home Honor Merrill Bloedel Education Center Award, Ohana house at Niulii • AIA Honor Award American Wood Council, • AIA Sunset magazine Western Home Merit Virginia Merrill Bloedel Education Center Award, Flint Beach Residence 1993: • AIA National Honor Award, Virginia Merrill 2008: AIA North Carolina Chapter Honor Award, The Bloedel Education Center Ramble at Biltmore Forest • AIA Seattle Chapter Honor Award, Salem Witch 2011: The Wood Design Awards, Honor Award, Bodega Trials Tercentenary Memorial Residence • AIA Boston Society of Architects Honor Award, 2012: AIA, Seattle Chapter – Medal of Honor Recipient Salem Witch Trials Tercentenary Memorial 1994: • AIA National Honor Award, Salem Witch Trials Tercentenary Memorial Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 9 Chad Everhart: Mastering Mystery and Surprise Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 9 067 Mastering Mystery and Surprise

we finish the whole project in a month or two?’ and I’ll say: ‘I’m probably not your guy.’”

After all, he reasons, he has to live with the drawings he presents and the buildings he designs.

With two degrees from North Carolina State’s College of Design – the first in environmental design and a second in architecture – Everhart’s been practicing for 15 years now, and on his own for seven. These days, he splits most of his working time between the classroom and the field.

Sometimes, the two merge into one. In 2013, he initiated a university-sponsored survey of two agricultural estates bequeathed to Appalachian State, each about 175 acres and populated with 19th-century farmhouses and dependancies. His tasks: take an inventory of all that’s there, develop a book for the library’s special collections, and sketch those buildings.

“It’s mostly drawings, with a lot of field sketches,” he says. “I follow the plans and draw the elevations – you know, this is how it all connects,” he says. “When I’m doing the fieldwork, I have this big sketchbook full of notes. After that, I come back and draw the buildings in pen and ink.”

The two estates are former homesteads dating back to about Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chad Everhart. Photo by Chad Everhart 1870 and 1880, respectively. Once working farms, they’re now part of a sustainable agriculture program sponsored by Two out of three’s not bad. the university. The two-story farmhouses are clad in white clapboard lap siding, typical of the time and era. Each is While Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson cherished surrounded by outbuildings dedicated to specific functions. the tactics of mystery, surprise, and speed in his storied Shenandoah Valley campaign, architect Chad Everhart “The outbuildings are more interesting to me,” he says. “One favors just the first two when working with his clients in the of my favorites is a springhouse – you hear about them, but to mountains of western North Carolina. see a functioning one is pretty interesting, And there’s a root cellar too. You know, an uneducated, working farmer built “I’ve never done anything in less than six months,” the them all by himself.” 37-year-old associate professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina says. “People say: ‘Can Then there’s the “weigh house.” 068 Chapter 9 Chad Everhart

Mountain re-shack before and after: These two photos contrast the original shack (bottom) and the finished renovation (top). The overall form and structure of the house were maintained while a new rainscreen cladding enclosed part of the porch. Upper photo credit: Photo by Chad Everhart, AIA; lower photo credit: Photo by David Shatzman Photography

For the finished book, Everhart’s added a rustic quality to his pen and ink drawings, one that recalls the buildings themselves. And he’s given the lettering an antique feel. “However I draw things, I try to make them fit in with the Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 project,” he says.

Especially for his clients.

“In the initial meeting, I’m talking to them and taking a lot of notes,” he says. “Even before we’ve signed the contract, I sketch a little because something might pop into my head.” The Salt House at Blackburn Farm Then he’ll head back to his office, to think about and sketch his way through the project. He doesn’t draw and talk to his “Architecturally, it’s a gable-roofed building, but how’d they clients simultaneously, preferring to work on his own and put that scale in the floor?” he asks. “I’ve got a lot of drawings then present. He’ll develop a rudimentary site analysis, taking of that.” note of where the sun is and how it tracks east to west, adding Chapter 9 069 Mastering Mystery and Surprise

Mountain re-shack landscape design sketch: As illustrated in the landscape/outdoor living area drawings above, design work continues even during the construction phase through numerous quick iterations drawn in a sketchbook, often on site. As construction began, numerous boulders were excavated from the site during grading and septic installation, which the client wanted to incorporate into the landscape and as steps off each exterior Mountain re-shack site analysis: This highly graphic site analysis space. These drawings speculate about possibilities for using the drawing not only illustrated the site’s natural characteristics to the boulders to transition from levels and to create outdoor rooms. client – a photographer and interior designer – it changed his Drawing by Chad Everhart, AIA mind about his personal dwelling on the land. As shown in the site analysis, the client initially wanted a small house situated in the large meadow, but decided to renovate the “Old Shack” after seeing this drawing. Drawing by Chad Everhart, AIA “They’ll say: ‘I see!’ while I’m showing them how we’ll track the sun and block the wind,” he says. “They don’t mass where a buildable area might be, seeking ways to block even know that they have these views, but they’re having bitterly cold northwest winds, and scouting out water features epiphanies about their site, with things they didn’t know and views of the mountains. were there.”

That’s all reflected in a series of colorful, loosely drawn After the presentation, he’ll email files to the clients so that sketches in colored markers and pencils, with text in black they can print them out, take them to the site, and hold them pen for emphasis. They’re usually drawn on sheets of paper in their hands. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 8 x 12 inches, or 11 x 17, max. When they’re done, he calls in the clients. His is a process so successful that word has gotten out, and Everhart finds himself in demand – not only for his The presentation by architect to client doubles as theater, architecture, but for his site evaluations too. “People hire where his tactical skills can be deployed. me to do this before they buy their property, to see if they’re really thinking about it right,” he says. “I’ll show them “I really love the elements of surprise and mystery,” he says. density, vegetation, and where the trees are, in a much more “I try not to show them too much. I analyze the site and show dynamic and informative way.” them this really colorful diagram – it’s legible and a very beneficial drawing. But I don’t show them everything at once.” His site analyses often lead to later design projects. Clients, impressed with his analytical skills, return once they’ve He gives them a plan, with a view from above, and selected their site. By that point, he’s ready to develop some he’ll sketch over that view on yellow trace paper atop. concepts. 070 Chapter 9 Chad Everhart

Mountain re-shack conceptual design scheme 01: The first “I try to create several different ideas, which is not super- conceptual design shows a straightforward approach to common anymore,” he says. “I usually go with a gut idea, renovating the derelict shack. Two quick floor plans suggest a new arrangement to the interior space, while a quick sketch over developing three to five very different concepts, in rough the client’s antique-quality photograph illustrates adding a small sketches.” dormer and new arrangement for windows and doors. Drawing by Chad Everhart, AIA; photo by David Shatzman Photography He’ll offer thumbnail and perspective drawings, indicating public and private spaces, without much detail initially. Over time, with client input, the drawings become more and more refined. “You need the element of surprise, so you don’t want to fire away all at once,” he says. “I believe I have to let them help in the design process, so they feel like they can manipulate it some. It’s a psychological game – the last thing I want is for the building to be built and them feeling like they weren’t a part of it.”

Once they’ve decided on a fairly solid floor plan, with doors, Mountain re-shack conceptual design scheme 02: The second windows, and a precise perspective of what it all will look conceptual design suggests maintaining the massing of the like, Everhart turns to his computer. existing shack while re-cladding it with new materials. Two quick floor plans suggest another option for a new arrangement to the interior space, while a quick sketch over the client’s antique-quality “I use two-dimensional software for orthographic drawings photograph illustrates the preservation of the original form while and three-dimensional software for computer modeling,” he also adding new details such as a guardrail on the front porch. says. “Typically at this point, I’ll collage color and images Drawing by Chad Everhart, AIA; photo by David Shatzman onto my drawings and renderings in Photoshop.” Photography

Then he’ll turn all the drawings loose, handing them off to his clients to hold for a while. He’ll ask them to refrain from telling him what they think, but to take them home and live Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 with them for a couple of weeks. They can come back after that, he’ll tell them.

The idea is to share the control of their project. “I don’t want them to feel like I’m putting them on the spot in a meeting,” he says. “That’s the beauty of this whole process – it’s really client-driven. I need the client in order to design anything – Mountain re-shack conceptual design scheme 03: The third even with my own house, my wife was my client.” conceptual design provides a unique departure from the two previous schemes. The floor plans and overlaid sketch suggest “Stonewall” Jackson may have triumphed with speed as his tearing down the decrepit building, leaving only the stone basement walls and chimney. This scheme shows a new, smaller driver in the Valley of Virginia in 1862, but Chad Everhart dwelling, composed of three levels, floating within a ghosted frame employs patience today in western Carolina – along with the of the original house. Drawing by Chad Everhart, AIA; photo by magic of his hand-drawn sketch. David Shatzman Photography Chapter 9 071 Mastering Mystery and Surprise Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Mountain re-shack rendering: To help the client visualize the exterior of the design, a rendered three-dimensional model was collaged onto the antique-quality photo of the existing shack used in the conceptual design phase. Drawing by Chad Everhart, AIA; background photo by David Shatzman Photography 072 Chapter 9 Chad Everhart

Name: R. Chadwick Everhart, AIA • Raleigh News & Observer Home of the Month, Farmhouse Redux Firm: Chad Everhart Architect, PA, Boone, NC 2011: American Institute of Architects Winston-Salem, Education: Merit Award, Mountain Re-Shack • Bachelor of Environmental Design in Architecture, North 2012: Eastern Region of the North American Wood Design Carolina State University, 1998 Awards, Jury’s Choice Award, Kiln Shed • Master of Architecture, North Carolina State University, 2013: • American Institute of Architects North Carolina, 2003 Residential Merit Award, Mountain Re-Shack • NC Modernist Houses Matsumoto Prize, Third Awards: Place, Mountain Cabin 2009: • American Institute of Architects Winston-Salem, Honor Award, Farmhouse Redux • American Institute of Architects Winston-Salem, Merit Award, Kiln Shed Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 10 Formwork: An Incredibly Efficient Shorthand Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 10 075 An Incredibly Efficient Shorthand Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Rough study of gallery/stair volumes and proportions 076 Chapter 10 Formwork

Cecilia Hernandez Nichols. Photo by Cat Thrasher Robert Nichols. Photo by Cat Thrasher

One’s a graduate of the Department of Architecture at If it all seems like a marriage made in heaven – well, it’s that, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 U.C. Berkeley, and the other’s from the “A” School at the too. University of Virginia. Cecilia Hernandez Nichols and Robert Nichols tied the knot One’s a former partner with Miami-based uber-minimalist in 2002, two years after they began practicing together in Rene Gonzalez, while the other worked for cradle-to-cradle the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Today, as thought leader William McDonough. they work together through the firm’s projects, they’ll find themselves sketching together as well. One’s a chatterbox, while the other thinks carefully before he speaks. “Sometimes we’ll meet with the client and there’s something so obvious that we have to come back and draw it right And once they set up their architecture firm in away,” Cecilia says. “For example, we want to be sure it’ll be Charlottesville, VA, one became the chief designer, while the just like a pomegranate – dull on the outside, and luscious on other looks after all the details. the inside.” Chapter 10 077 An Incredibly Efficient Shorthand

“Our sketches are an incredibly efficient shorthand for us to clarify and flesh out what we’re trying to do,” Robert says. “It ends up as a collection of souvenirs to test against ongoing design development.”

Theirs is a collaborative process, though they rarely work on the same drawing, with the exception of the proverbial back of an envelope, at the start of a project. And even that’s likely to entail a discussion across the dinner table or on an aircraft, where they’re constantly thinking through design problems.

“It’s a conversation on the fly – I’ll put a few lines on an envelope and she’ll say: ‘Like this, or like that?’” Robert says. Early plan study from first renovation phase “And off it goes, with one of us taking it from there.”

In many aspects they offer complementary sets of skills, though they can be completely redundant too. Cecilia serves as the firm’s primary designer – critiquing what happens in the office, and how things should look with materials and finishes. She’s involved with the conceptual problem-solving, as well as clients, projects, sites, existing buildings, and how to work within a budget.

“She’s the boss of all that stuff,” Robert says. “I fill in the gaps with large and small details, like a stairway or a doorway or technical issues related to the structural envelope, or the Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 coordination of systems.”

It’s a process that serves the architects – and their clients – well.

“We usually say to people that Robert has the technical oversight from beginning to end,” Cecilia says. “He’s much better at the nuts and bolts of code, structure, and fabrication and has an innate mechanical sense – he plays guitar, and fixes all our cars.”

He’ll use a soft pencil and its organic contour to test out irregular materials like reclaimed wood, or wrought iron. He Rough sketches of alternative structural strategies for dining table 078 Chapter 10 Formwork

Study of site cross-section at bridge connecting existing and new Study of proportions and textural options at north elevation volumes

calls for harder graphite to evoke crisp and shiny details, like “Computers have a troublesome way of showing clients stainless steel, or reflective of light and sound, like glass. “I’ll that a project is at a more advanced state than it really is,” show all these drawings to Cecilia, and she’ll understand how Robert adds. it’s made just from the line quality and if it fits into her vision of the larger scale.” Their sketches are also useful in the actual problem- solving phase of design, as Cecilia discovered with a recent “He’ll say the wood can’t do that but maybe if we miter it this residential project – an addition to an existing log cabin way, it could,” she says. “And I’ll come back faster, looking for next to a pond near Charlottesville. Robert had made the a tool to do it.” underlay drawings of the cabin, and they had a property survey, so they were familiar with the slopes on site. There Their process usually evolves, from the initial parti, to an was an appealing view there, though the existing house overlay from Robert, drafted on a computer with accurate didn’t take advantage of it. dimensions. Cecilia will lay trace on top of that and draw over it. “I’m trying to fine tune it, because I can’t see “We looked at the drawings, and realized that conceptually, well enough on the computer,” she says. “I can get to the instead of another little building attached to the house, our proportions I want more quickly, since I can make five strategy should be to put a stone wall underneath it and make sketches in the time I’d do it on a computer. But it’s more space for the addition,” she says. “I was sketching the site than just time – it’s the tool I grew up using.” lines sloping away from the house, and I realized I could slip a floor under it.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 She’s adept at testing out potential floor plans, from one end of a building to another, mostly because she’s already got what Although she’d initially recognized the crux of the problem, she wants in her head. “She wants a pencil in her hand when the solution didn’t present itself until she’d struggled with she’s seeking the beauty of a building,” Robert says. “A pencil layer upon layer of hand-drawn sketches. “It was great to test gives her certain feedback, and she’s faster and more efficient it out once I had the idea,” she says. because she’s done it so much.” The result is an addition that snugs up low against the site They’re drawing with their clients less than they once did – where the slope drops off, connecting to the original home and showing them more computer-generated graphics, which as its foundation. It’s now a huge glass room, open to the doesn’t always work to their advantage. Virginia countryside, with a view of the pond.

“People sometimes glom onto ideas from the computer that And it’s a seamless solution – much like the relationship we don’t want them to,” Cecilia says. between the two architects who created it. Chapter 10 079 An Incredibly Efficient Shorthand

Study of program distribution and building volumes

Proportional study of west elevation Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Turkey Bridge. Photo by Jack Looney 080 Chapter 10 Formwork

Name: Cecilia Hernandez Roberts Name: Robert Nichols

Firm: Formwork, Charlottesville, VA Firm: Formwork, Charlottesville, VA

Education: Education: • University of Pennsylvania, Design of the Environment, • Bucknell University, Double Major in Economics and 1984–1988 Philosophy, Minor in Art History, 1981–1986 • University of California Berkeley, M.A. in Architecture, • University of Virginia School of Architecture, M.A. 1990–1993 Architecture, 1992–1995 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 11 Phil Freelon: The Language of Architecture Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 11 083 The Language of Architecture Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Raleigh Durham International Airport concept. The Freelon Group Inc. 084 Chapter 11 Phil Freelon

Drawing is embedded firmly in Phil Freelon’s DNA.

His grandfather, Allan Randall Freelon, Sr., was a critically acclaimed painter and printmaker whose work first came to light during the Harlem Renaissance. It’s still celebrated today – with pieces hanging in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and other distinctive museums and private collections.

The pioneering artist would influence his young grandson, early on and in a number of ways.

“I remember going to his studio and sticking my finger Phil Freelon, FAIA. Photo by Lundie’s Photography in palettes with gobs of paint – and getting scolded,” the 60-year-old Freelon says today. “But he encouraged me to paint and to sculpt.”

He also led his grandson through experiential excursions into the woods. “I was a 6-year-old bouncing all around, so he’d ask me to sit down on a log, to close my eyes and to listen,” Freelon says. “I zeroed in on my sense of hearing first, and then on my sight – it was the first time I was encouraged to experience my surroundings in a different way.”

Urged early on to learn to draw by hand, he later found that he could delight his grandfather – before his death in 1960 – Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 with an award for his sketches, and favorable coverage in the local newspaper. Raleigh Durham International Airport parking structure. Photo © “It’s almost a continuous thing from my earliest memory,” James West/JWestProductions.com he says about his inclination toward the visual arts. In elementary and middle school, there were birdhouses to build, automobiles to carve from blocks of wood, and model As a teenager, he attended Central High School in airplanes, cars, and battleships to be precisely assembled. Philadelphia. Known as one of the oldest and best-ranked public high schools in the nation, it boasts a roster of “That’s why architecture was compelling to me: it involves all graduates that includes Louis Kahn. “It was equivalent to a the dimensions, including time,” he says. “It’s an extension of prep school education, with some drawing and art classes,” he the visual arts – it’s something you walk through, something says of the school where most of his teachers held advanced that impacts people’s lives.” degrees, and where he first became interested in design. Chapter 11 085 The Language of Architecture

“I thought architecture was the perfect fit for me – a blend international design competition for the museum. More of art, math, and science,” he says. “It turned out to be all than 30 firms entered the competition at its outset. Six were of that and much more. Architecture was art with utility – invited to prepare design concepts and present. But only one I could create something that every day, people would enjoy.” entry won.

That was an understated, if prescient, train of thought. Their design, the one that triumphed over high-powered firms like Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, Moshe Safdie and Associates, Freelon’s newest creation for the appreciation of people and Foster + Partners, actually began as a series of sketches around the world is the critically acclaimed Smithsonian by Adjaye that evolved into models and drawings, and finally National Museum for African American History and Culture, into an array of presentation boards in Freelon’s office. on the Mall in Washington, D.C. They’re jam-packed with images and descriptions of a In 2008, he teamed up with architects Max Bond, David Yoruban crown that the architects used as the inspiration for Adjaye and the Smith Group for the winning entry in the the museum’s corona-like form. Additional references, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

National Museum of African American History and Culture/Smithsonian Institution. Freelon Adjaye Bond/Smith Group, David Adjaye 086 Chapter 11 Phil Freelon

The Gantt Center. The Freelon Group Inc.

including water, natural light, and a welcoming front porch, describe the arc of the African American experience.

“It had to communicate in a very limited space the genesis of the idea,” he says. “It was a way to get the story out – something to resonate across the board with a group of architects, educators, and laypeople.”

The drawings, words, and images tell the story of how the museum could be more than just a vessel to hold a series of exhibitions. They form a compelling document that interprets the vision of the institution that’s dedicated to telling the story of the African American people. The Gantt Center. Photo © Mark Herboth Photography

“The drawings and diagrams were intended to help the audience understand that the building plays a role in and museums, you have to convince the client that you’re the conveying the important tenets of the institution,” he says. right firm, in order to get to the interview. Drawing becomes “And it shows how we were going to do it. There are a important to that pursuit because the client wants to know number of ideas going on there – the passage through and how you think.” across water, contemplation, ascension, and resilience.” It’s paid off handsomely for Freelon and the 40 architects But did drawing play a major role in the win? on staff in his Durham, NC office, which in 2014 merged Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 with Perkins & Will. They’ve recently completed a planning “Absolutely,” Freelon says. “Drawing is the language of study for the renovation of, and addition to, one of Mies architecture – you can’t effectively express your ideas van der Rohe’s last buildings – the Martin Luther King, Jr. without it.” Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. Other examples of recent Freelon projects include the Sterling Chemistry Lab It’s a way for an architect to demonstrate a thought process and Undergraduate Science Center at Yale University, and to a client, and part of a visual language that also includes the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art and photos, models, and diagrams. An architect can show photos Culture in Charlotte, NC. of completed projects, but a sketch satisfies thoughtful clients who want to be critically engaged in the design process. For each, drawing guided the lines of communications. “At some point the architect and client agree on what “Most of the time, the client doesn’t come to us – we have to they need to do, and then programming begins with some go and find them,” he says. “With libraries, campus buildings, rudimentary diagramming that gives form and shape to what’s Chapter 11 087 The Language of Architecture

written out on paper,” he says. “You start with broad ideas, but still finds time to teach MIT students about the practice and then refine them. You have to build up to it, and you of architecture. can’t wait until the building’s done. Drawings are essential to that.” Their discussions about drawing in an age of computers are ongoing. “A student might say: ‘I’m not good at drawing,’ and A recipient of the Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard University I say: ‘Wait a minute – What about the musician who’s not Graduate School of Design, Freelon studied architecture good on his or her instrument?’” as an undergraduate at NC State’s College of Design, and earned his Master’s degree in architecture from MIT. He Point taken. But even if he does believe in the power of the established the firm that’s now part of Perkins+Will in 1990, sketch, he also understands that it’s one of many tools at an architect’s fingertips. And because architecture is about the idea and the creative energy that a designer brings to the table, all those tools must be employed to engage a client.

“Architects are going to the computer earlier and earlier – I know some that start the ideation process at the computer at the beginning, and that’s all right,” he says. “But please don’t tell me that it’s ruining our students, because it’s not. I choose to do both. You need to decide for yourself.”

To ignore advances in computer technology would be to ignore its valuable assets, he reasons. Painting didn’t go Freelon table. Phil Freelon away when photography arrived. Nor did theater die when motion pictures came along, or movies with the advent of television.

“I know how to draw a perspective with a horizon line and a Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 true height line,” he says. “But why would I do that myself if a computer can help me do it in one-tenth of the time?”

He chooses to start with a hand-sketch, but won’t condemn anyone who favors a computer.

“The proof is in the pudding,” he says. “It’s about whether the idea is good.”

Freelon table. Photo by Phil Freelon His work is an ongoing testament to that. 088 Chapter 11 Phil Freelon

Name: Phil Freelon been recognized nationally, including first prize in the PPG Furniture Design Competition and design contract work with Firm: Perkins+Will, Durham, NC Herman Miller. Phil Freelon is the founder and president of The Freelon A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Freelon earned his Group, Inc. In 2014, Freelon joined forces with global Bachelor of Environmental Design degree in Architecture architecture and design firm Perkins+Will. As the managing from North Carolina State University and his Master of and design director of the North Carolina practice, he Architecture degree from MIT. He also received a Loeb leads both Perkins+Will North Carolina offices in Research Fellowship and spent a year of independent study at the Triangle Park and Charlotte. Freelon comes to Perkins+Will Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He has as an important member of the firm-wide leadership team and served as an adjunct faculty member at North Carolina State has joined the board of directors. He is also a key leader for University’s College of Design and has lectured at Harvard, the firm’s cultural and civic practice. MIT, the University of Maryland, Syracuse University, Freelon has led multi-faceted design teams on museum Auburn University, the University of Utah, the University projects in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; San of California Berkeley, Kent State University, and the New Francisco, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Atlanta Jersey Institute of Technology, among others. Freelon is and Augusta, Georgia; and Greensboro and Charlotte, North currently on the faculty at MIT’s School of Architecture and Carolina. Library projects include facilities in Chicago, Planning. Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; and Durham, Freelon is a Peer Professional for the General Services NC. The team of Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup is Administration’s Design Excellence Program and has leading the design for the Smithsonian’s new National served on numerous design award juries, including the Museum of African American History and Culture currently National AIA Institute Honor Awards jury and the National under construction on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Endowment for the Arts Design Stewardship Panel. Freelon Freelon’s work has been published in national professional is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the journals including Architecture, Progressive Architecture, recipient of AIA North Carolina’s Gold Medal, its highest Architectural Record, and Contract magazine where he individual honor. He is a LEED Accredited Professional and was named Designer of the Year for 2008. Metropolis and the 2009 recipient of the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award for Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Metropolitan Home magazines and the New York Times have Public architecture. In 2011 President Obama named him to also featured Freelon and the firm. His furniture design has the US Commission of Fine Arts. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 12 Michael Graves: Lessons Learned in Rome Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 12 091 Lessons Learned in Rome

Technical drawings, such as construction documents, also communicate. They provide instructional information to contractors who use them to determine how the parts of a building relate to each other in three dimensions, whether drawn that way or derived from a composite of two- dimensional details. These drawings, like representational renderings that help us visualize, are inherently fragmentary. We need to process multiple drawings in our minds to comprehend how they go together to create the building. Thus, as tools of communication, the rendering and the technical drawing exercise both our eyes and our minds.

As tools of communication, drawings made by hand offer something more: a glimpse into the creative process, a distillation of whatever the architect or designer thought was important. What the architect doesn’t draw is often as revealing as what is drawn.

Michael Graves. Courtesy Michael Graves & Associates, photo by Barry Johnson For me, drawing by hand is an essential part of my creative process. My mind, eye, and hand are engaged with each other Editor's note: One of my most prized possessions is a personally- in the act of conceiving a building or an object. Just as the signed copy of Michael Graves’ book, “Images of a Grand Tour”. act of drawing something we’ve seen allows us to remember It is all about drawing by hand in Italy, and here, the architect it, drawing to design creates an almost emotional attachment, explains why both are important: a commitment, to an idea. I’ve often said that drawing is a tangible form of visual speculation and is deeply human. Architects who rely on computational parametrics to design Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Why is drawing by hand important in their buildings on a computer may not reach the same level of architecture? human presence in design. For me at least, working digitally In architecture, drawing functions in two ways: creation is emotionally distant and therefore may not capture the and communication. Communication, of course, is the human experience that I think is at the core of everything we more obvious of the two. We comprehend the world around do. I’m not saying that the computer doesn’t have its place. It us through all of our senses, including sight. When I am certainly does, but it is no substitute for the joy and power of explaining an unbuilt work, drawing is an effective tool since conceiving something and drawing it yourself. it’s a visual representation of a building, a landscape, a city, or an object that may not yet have a sound, a smell, or a When did you begin to draw? Why? What were tangible surface. A single drawing, or even a series of photo- the circumstances? realistic computer renderings, cannot convey the experience of a built place, but they do allow viewers to visualize it and I’ve been drawing since I was a young child. Early on, I was imagine what it might be like to be there. interested in cartoon characters like Donald Duck but, by the 092 Chapter 12 Michael Graves

South elevation, imagined landscape, pencil on paper. Courtesy South elevation study, terracotta pencil on paper. Courtesy Michael Michael Graves & Associates Graves & Associates

time I was about eight years old, I started drawing buildings. those years, architecture and drawing became inextricably Houses in our neighborhood in Indianapolis were among linked. That experience dramatically influenced who I am my favorite subjects. I drew to amuse myself and got enough today. I walked the streets of Rome, and later other places praise, even then, that drawing became core to my sense of in Italy and France, documenting what I saw. During this self. time, my drawings changed from large-scale, expressive, and pictorial ink-and-wash drawings – artifacts in their own right I’m sure my childhood drawings were pretty crude, but I – to simpler, more reductive line drawings in ink or pencil, recall submitting a drawing of the Parthenon (who knew I’d which captured the essence of what I wanted to remember. start with the ancients?) to a school competition and having it rejected because the teachers thought I had traced it! I Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Is there a particular architect whose drawings you was heart-broken but my mother convinced me to take that admire? If so, why? as a compliment. When asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, drawing was going to be central, no matter what. Since my time in Rome in the early 1960s, I became very The story I’ve often told is that my mother, always wise and interested in what I refer to as “architectural literature,” encouraging, was concerned that I should not simply be an volumes such as Palladio’s Four Books on Architecture, artist. She quipped that I’d surely starve unless I turned out to as well as folios by Durand and Letarouilly. All of these be as good as Picasso. She suggested that using drawing in a contain drawings – plans, sections, elevations, details, profession like architecture would be more fruitful, and so my and perspectives – that teach us valuable lessons about future was sealed. architectural composition. An architect like Piranesi similarly offers insight into the construction of ancient buildings It was, however, the two years (1960–1962) that I spent after through the way that he documented them as ruins. I am also graduate school as a Rome Prize Fellow of the American fascinated by the work of more contemporary architects, from Academy in Rome that were transformational for me. In the late Aldo Rossi to Léon Krier, and many others. What Chapter 12 093 Lessons Learned in Rome

South elevation study, pastel on yellow tracing paper. Courtesy South elevation, competition phase, pencil and colored pencil on Michael Graves & Associates yellow tracing paper. Courtesy Michael Graves & Associates

they chose to draw – or not – provides an intriguing insight drawings. They recognize the creative process and are excited into their thought process and what they think is important. by being part of it, even vicariously.

How does drawing by hand help an architect How is drawing used as a tool of investigation? communicate with each of his constituencies? How In 1977, I wrote an article on architectural drawing for the does your firm use it as a collaborative effort? British Journal Architectural Design. Called “The Necessity of Among architects, drawing is a shared language. We can Drawing: Tangible Speculation,” the piece identified three maintain a dialogue about composition by drawing back categories of drawings, each with a different purpose. The first and forth even on the same piece of paper, making a kind of category, the “referential sketch,” is a type of drawing that I joyful game of developing a plan, move by move. When one use to investigate and document ideas and things I want to of my colleagues in our architectural practice shows me a remember. Collected, these sketches become a visual diary sketch of something, I might draw over the top of it to refine Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 proportion, or to change the profile of some element. Because we still value the hand-drawn drawing, it becomes a kind of shorthand that describes our intentions. I’ve always found it interesting that, when we work overseas, for example, in Japan where we don’t speak the same verbal language, we communicate with architects and contractors seamlessly through the language of drawing.

Clients sometimes have a hard time reading two-dimensional drawings, and therefore perspective renderings or even physical models are helpful in communicating design intentions. However, I’m often reminded how much our South elevation, final version, pencil and colored pencil on yellow clients enjoy seeing sketches and more developed hand tracing paper. Courtesy Michael Graves & Associates 094 Chapter 12 Michael Graves

Denver Central Library, southwest view from Acoma Plaza. Courtesy Michael Graves & Associates, photo by Timothy Hursley

that prompts me to recollect what I thought was interesting Where do you find inspiration? in the first place. Drawing them by hand (versus snapping a The lessons I learned in Rome in the 1960s inspired me photograph) indelibly etches them into my memory. at the time and continue to influence me today. I learned humanistic values with a dual emphasis on man and the The second type of drawing, the “preparatory study,” is landscape. When we regard man as the center, we start to specific to a project and represents a progressive development recognize that the value of design is the meaning that it has of a design. It may start with a sketch of the parti, or general for people. We develop ideas about how design impacts the organizational idea, and move toward a fuller notation of individual. However, since we don’t live in a vacuum but the plan. In the vertical surface, it may start with the overall rather in the landscape of the natural and built environment, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 massing and proportion of the façades, and develop into a the character of that environment directly influences what full-blown investigation of character. The intention is thus we care about as well as the mechanics of our everyday lives. to generate the initial ideas for the project and develop them into a final design. While the later phases of preparatory It was in Rome that I realized that character in architecture studies are suitable for being entered into the computer, I wasn’t a given. It develops from layers and layers of find that the conceptual stage benefits from what I referred to story-telling. It enriches everything we do, connecting past, earlier as the collaboration of mind, eye, and hand. present, and future in a human-centered way. I’ve often said that the columns of the Baldacchino in St. Peter’s have The third type, the “definitive drawing,” is self-explanatory. the shape they do for a reason. So do many of the Ancient It is primarily a means to document and communicate design Roman, Renaissance, and Baroque buildings that I studied in as complete a manner as possible, typically so that it can in Rome. Those stories – the myths and rituals of our daily be built. This is where the computer is most useful, in my lives and their presence in built form – create a richness that view. inspires me every day. Chapter 12 095 Lessons Learned in Rome

Name: Michael Graves, FAIA Architectural Lighting, David Edward Furniture, Delta Faucet, and Progress Lighting, among others. MG DG has Firm: Michael Graves & Associates, Princeton, NJ and also designed innovative packaging and graphic identity New York programs supporting MG DG and MGA projects. Michael Graves, FAIA, has been in the forefront of Major awards: Michael Graves and the firms have received architecture and design since he founded his practice in 1964. over 200 awards for design excellence. He is the 2012 Richard Since then, the practice has evolved into two firms: Michael H. Driehaus Prize Laureate. Graves received the 1999 Graves & Associates (MGA), which provides architecture, National Medal of Arts from President Clinton. In 2001, the interior design, and master planning services, and Michael American Institute of Architects awarded Michael Graves its Graves Design Group (MG DG), which specializes in product Gold Medal, the highest award bestowed upon an individual design, graphic design, and branding. The firms are based in architect. Graves was the recipient of the 2010 AIA /ACSA Princeton, New Jersey and New York City. Through their Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. multiple studios, the firms are highly integrated and support He was also the first architect inducted into the New Jersey a continuum among architecture, interiors, and furnishings. Hall of Fame. In addition, Graves received the inaugural The architectural practice has designed over 400 buildings Russel Wright Award for product design, the Tau Sigma Delta worldwide encompassing many building types: large-scale Gold Medal, in recognition of his distinguished teaching master plans, corporate headquarters and other office career, and the William Howard Taft lifetime achievement buildings, hotels and resorts, restaurants and retail stores, medal from the University of Cincinnati. He has become facilities for sports and recreation, healthcare facilities, civic internationally recognized as a healthcare design advocate, projects such as embassies, courthouses and monuments, a and in 2010 the Center for Health Design named Graves one wide variety of university buildings, museums, theaters and of the Top 25 Most Influential People in Healthcare Design. public libraries, housing and single-family residences. From Graves regularly gives lectures to major healthcare advocacy early projects such as the award-winning Humana Building groups, including AARP, the Healthcare Design Conference, in Louisville, Kentucky, completed in the 1980s, to more and TEDMED. In March 2013, President Obama appointed recent work such as the Ministry of Health and Sport in The Graves to the US Access Board. Hague, MGA has directly influenced the transformation of urban architecture from abstract modernism toward more A native of Indianapolis, Graves received his architectural Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 contextual responses. Critic Paul Goldberger, writing in The training at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard New York Times, called Graves “truly the most original voice University. In 1960, he won the Rome Prize and studied at in American architecture.” the American Academy in Rome for two years, of which he is now a Trustee. In 1962, Graves began a 39-year The product design practice has designed over 2,000 teaching career at Princeton University, where he is now products, which include a wide variety of consumer the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus. products for home, office, and personal use, as well as He has received 14 honorary doctorates and is a member building components such as lighting, hardware, bath, and of the National Academy, the American Academy of Arts kitchen products. Strategic partnerships have included and Letters, and he is a Fellow of the American Institute of JCPenney, Target Stores, and manufacturers such as Alessi, Architects. Stryker Medical, Steuben, Lenox/Dansk, Disney, Baldinger This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 13 Frank Harmon: Expressing the Idea Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 13 099 Expressing the Idea

Poplar Forest. Drawing by Frank Harmon

Poplar Forest. Drawing by Frank Harmon

On a late spring morning in 2011, a motor coach jam-packed quietly pulled out his sketchbook and pens, and strategically Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 with North Carolina architects nosed into the parking lot at positioned himself on the lawn beneath the branches of a Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s Palladian retreat in rural leafy tulip poplar. Slowly, he began to draw the contours of Bedford County, Virginia. Jefferson’s octagonal-shaped masterpiece, a lyrical essay on light composed in deep-red brick, cream-colored mortar, and An entourage of 50 people disembarked, to be divided into limestone-plastered columns. He was working to discern the two groups. One group would follow the estate’s director of nature of the building, its site, and its landscape, using the archeology and landscape through the grounds surrounding fewest number of lines possible. the early nineteenth-century home. The other was to tour the interior of the house with its architectural historian. His name is Frank Harmon, and he’s known to some as After lunch, the groups would switch tour guides. the unofficial dean of North Carolina architects. Born in Georgia, he’s been drawing since the summer of 1965, when But one individual, wearing a Panama hat and a white, he won a travel scholarship to Athens, Greece as a student short-sleeved linen shirt, elected to do neither. Instead, he from the Architectural Association (AA) in London. “My 100 Chapter 13 Frank Harmon

not far behind, though working on a larger scale. “At the AA we were encouraged to sketch diagrams of our projects, with permission to draw on the walls,” he says. “Every summer the AA would give the school a fresh coat of paint, ready for the inspiration of the next group of students.”

He believes that every building offers lessons to be learned – and that the best way to absorb them is to sketch. “When you draw, you really have to look at it,” he says. “It’s a way to discover and to remember.”

Harmon was a young man when Frank Lloyd Wright, who died in 1959, was still practicing. He believes Wright’s buildings were heavily influenced by the sketches he made, as was true for most designers of that era. “His architecture has a lot to do with the way he drew it, the way he saw it, and the way he touched it with his hands,” he says.

These days, whether Harmon is sketching Poplar Forest in rural Virginia, Oak Alley on the Louisiana bayou, or the Center for Architecture and Design in downtown Raleigh, he acknowledges the inherently tactile qualities of the drawing process. He believes that a computer keyboard, by definition,

Frank Harmon. Photo by Juli Leonard/The News & Observer

favorite architect was Le Corbusier, who drew beautifully,” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 he says.

Le Corbusier died the same year that Harmon toured Greece, but he also had visited Athens as a young man. He viewed the city through a student’s eyes too, making a number of memorable sketches. “He talked about the importance of drawing, and uniting the eye and the hand with the mind,” Harmon says. “I took a sketchbook and spent the summer sketching buildings there, including the Parthenon.”

Le Corbusier kept his sketchbook with him all his life, recording whatever he saw, whether a Turkish living Competition drawing of northwest corner, AIA North Carolina room or a Greek temple in the landscape. Harmon was Center for Architecture and Design. Drawing by Frank Harmon Chapter 13 101 Expressing the Idea

Early sketch of northwest corner, AIA North Carolina Center for Study of south elevation, AIA North Carolina Center for Architecture and Design. Drawing by Frank Harmon Architecture and Design. Drawing by Frank Harmon

in a way I get to experience its recreation. Then it’s lodged in my mind forever,” Harmon says. “Unlike a photograph, drawing gives you the ability to capture the essence of a place, sometimes by distorting what you see.”

It also unlocks the creative process, allowing the architect to focus on a small feature, then switch scales instantly to Study of north elevation, AIA North Carolina Center for the project’s master plan. “The sketchbooks of Le Corbusier Architecture and Design. Drawing by Frank Harmon include details of a window vent, the interior of a room, and a bird’s eye view of a house,” he said. “They’re all on the same lacks these qualities – and that most good architects will page and probably done simultaneously.” always be found with a sketchbook at hand. “Which of us wakes up at night with a laptop to make a sketch?” he asks Harmon’s intent is to express the idea. His process in rhetorically. doing that, from hand-drawn image to finished elevation, is a complex choreography of eye, mind, heart, hand, and Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 To be sure, there are advantages to working with a computer. computer. Early sketches are often plan or section diagrams, Among them are accuracy, the ability to make changes easily, or a sketch view of a building or landscape. “Usually, to transmit information quickly for collaboration, and to store someone in our office takes my sketch and draws it to scale in words and images indefinitely. PowerCAD. Then I sketch over it again,” he says.

But, as Michael Graves has pointed out, a computer wants For details of elevations, he’ll develop several variations of the finality of closing the question of problem-solving, where color sketches, also redrawn on the computer. Sometimes a drawing does just the opposite: it leaves the question open – he’ll draw a full-size section on a huge black wall at his office, and leads to the next drawing. to test scale and proportion. “Part of the magic of drawing is that we discover the unexpected as we draw,” he says. And compared to photography, sketching by hand affords the opportunity to study and retain what the eye sees, instead of He finds that sketching with others is not just a means of simply snapping a shutter. “If I draw the building as I see it, collaborating, but an enhanced way to communicate – 102 Chapter 13 Frank Harmon

And just as an effective public speaker uses hands and facial expressions to communicate, the sketch reinforces the architect’s message. “Phillip Johnson said that his clients loved the drawing more than the building – and they didn’t have to pay the heating bill for the drawing,” he says. “Drawings are full of promise, because there’s a personal connection between maker and user.”

Jefferson, of course, was both at Poplar Forest, although only a few of the 700 drawings he left behind offer details of his home there.

Study of construction and materials. Drawing by Frank Harmon Harmon will leave a legacy that’s a little more prolific. On that late spring afternoon in 2011, he easily inked a dozen especially with clients, who appreciate being involved in a drawings of the retreat’s interior and exterior, adding them design. “I often sketch while meeting with them, and they to one of his 40 sketchbooks. Since each book contains love it,” he says. “They feel like someone’s actually listening 200 images, that’s a career total of about 8,000 images. to them.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

South elevation, AIA North Carolina Center for Architecture and Design. Photo by Tim Hursley Chapter 13 103 Expressing the Idea

Photo of northwest corner, AIA North Carolina Center for Architecture and Design. Photo by Tim Hursley

He’s left many of them, along with project files and models, Their quality, though, is significant too. “They make me to North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) Special think of Picasso’s early work,” says NCSU curator Catherine Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Collections Research Center. They’re archived alongside the Bishir. “To capture the spirit economically like that, you really work of some of Raleigh’s best-known mid-century modern have to be good.” masters, including George Matsumoto, James Fitzgibbon, and Milton Small. That’s high praise from even higher quarters. Bishir is the author of the definitive and widely acclaimed North Carolina “We wanted them because of his stature in the architecture Architecture, published in 1991 by The University of North field,” says NCSU archivist Todd Kosmerick. “He’s known Carolina Press. and respected across the nation and internationally, and we thought they would be a great addition to our holdings.” Like much of Harmon’s work, it’s considered a masterpiece.

Their sheer quantity speaks volumes. Of the center’s 1,000 linear feet of archived drawings, Kosmerick estimates that a little more than 250 feet are Harmon’s alone. 104 Chapter 13 Frank Harmon

Name: Frank Harmon, FAIA 2005: Residential Architect magazine’s “Top Firm of the Year” 2009: Custom Home magazine Design Awards, Gold Award, Firm: Frank Harmon Architect PA, Raleigh, NC Strickland Ferris House Education: 2012: • American Institute of Architects, South Atlantic • The School of Design, North Carolina State Region, Honor Award, JC Raulston Arboretum University, 1959–1961 Lath House • AA Diploma, The Architectural Association School of • American Institute of Architects North Carolina, Architecture, London, England, 1967 Honor Award, Center for Architecture and Design Major awards: Fifty-four design awards thus far. Some • Ranked 21st out of Top 50 First in the Nation by specific honors and accolades include the following: Architect Magazine, based on design, sustainability, 1995: Henry Kamphoefner Prize for Distinguished Modern and financial performance Design over a Ten-Year Period from AIA North Carolina 2002: Residential Architect magazine “Project of the Year,” Taylor Vacation House Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 14 Höweler + Yoon: Winning Favor Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 14 107 Winning Favor

There are drawbacks, however. A photo rendering can often present an illusion of resolution – it’s so full of details that it gives the client and the public a false sense of completeness. A design may look resolved, but it’s not.

“It locks things in early – earlier than they used to be,” he says. “When you were working on a building with a six- month design schedule, you showed up at the first meeting with basic stuff like a design and a model.”

Over time, that would be followed with schematics, construction drawings, and conversations about materials and options. Detailed discussions between architect and client Meejin Yoon and Erick Höweler. Photo Courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture refined the project’s design. But now many decisions are made the moment a computer rendering is finalized, and even At the age of 41, Eric Höweler’s been front and center for a before that first client meeting or initial public hearing. revolution in architectural rendering. “Say you’re designing a skyscraper,” he says. “You used to draw “I learned to draw at Cornell in the late 1980s and early a form at the beginning, but not a curtain wall. Now, on the 1990s, and there were no computers until my last year first day you have to make a decision, in photorealism, about at school,” the partner in Boston-based Höweler + Yoon that curtain wall, and it’s one that you’re not necessarily Architecture says. “It wasn’t how you drew, but what you ready to do.” drew.”

At the time, analog was king. “Everyone was drawing and exploring different techniques with pencil and ink, but also photo collage, acetates, and transfers,” he says. “We used Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 the Xerox machine and acetone to transfer images onto our drawings.”

Today, he and his partner Meejin Yoon compete for clients in a totally different world – one that’s fast-paced, short-fused, and aptly described as an arms race for new work. The concept sketch demonstrates the overlapping relationships between urban form, mobility systems, and land values. The Photo renderings now play a pivotal role. diagram suggests the potential to use the data related to the overlapping systems to transform the urban mobility experience for both the pedestrian and commuter. Embedding the motif of a two- “On Day One, the client wants something fully rendered dimensional Venn diagram into a three-dimensional diagram of a by a computer,” he says. “Nowadays everybody’s doing it – generic American city, this sketch suggests possible relationships it takes skill and time, but there’s an expectation that a photo between a series of sets, with the city form at its center. Image rendering is necessary at the first meeting.” courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture 108 Chapter 14 Höweler + Yoon

Connectivity offered by a car-to-car system is visualized by superimposing a diagram of a social network interface of a heads-up display. The windshield is depicted as both a smart surface with content as well as a frame to see the streetscape and city beyond. This concept sketch uses a frame within a frame on the window to highlight the role of a future interface and the role A sketch of a future intelligent adaptive road surface, the of the driver in a single view. Image courtesy of Höweler + Yoon “tripanel,” which can change responsively into three modes – hard, Architecture soft, and energy producing – suggests the awareness of a vehicle to pedestrians and other modes of mobility in the city. The drawing portrays both a smart road and a smart car and the networked The client comes to a meeting and believes the design is system that would enable real-time responsiveness to “sharing” complete, or the public comes to a hearing and arrives at the a transformable road. The foreground is articulated enough to same conclusion. “If you later change a color from pink to suggest a new kind of road and the red lines convey a networked blue, the public wants to know why it changed,” he says. “It system of communication between the protagonists on the road in the city. Image courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture affects the overall design process – it doesn’t allow design to develop over time.”

He’s not advocating a return to charcoal sketches, just noting that computer renderings have created new workflows, new expectations, and a new culture. Architecture, he says, not only produces artifacts, renderings, and models, but also the audiences for them. And the computer rendering is changing the way those audiences read and interpret architecture.

“When it comes to formal presentations, the expectation is for highly realistic renderings,” he says. “Our competitors are doing full renderings and so if a client asks for them, then we Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 do, too.” The concept sketch of the Shareway suggests a future scenario He believes in the computer as one more tool in an arsenal where various infrastructure modes are bundled together and of techniques. “We don’t fetishize the technology, we just try switching between modes is more seamless. The drawing depicts to exploit every medium to its maximum,” he says. “There’s high-speed rail, private and shared vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists in a single view and along a single infrastructural corridor. a lot of creativity with analog techniques, and the digital The character depicted in red in the foreground is shown engaged tools vastly expand the possibilities, but it still comes down in a personalized interface for mobility, suggesting that the to being creative with any medium, and the content of what’s “hardware of the road” (physical infrastructure) and the “software being represented.” of its interfaces” (digital infrastructure) would be coordinated and calibrated to create seamless switching and sharing in the future. The drawing depicts a wide and deep scene that creates a virtually That’s not to say he doesn’t have an appreciation for hand impossible perspective in which all the modes of transportation are drawing. He does – and he shares it with his students at the represented on different levels. Image courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Harvard Graduate School of Design. Architecture Chapter 14 109 Winning Favor

A rendering of a new proposed South Station to link the train station with the bus depot is depicted as an open seamless space between several different modes of mobility and the city. Graphics applied to surfaces suggest personalized and responsive walkways in an information-integrated architecture. Depicted as a public space of flows, activities of movement as well as activities of gathering are part of the scene. This hybrid rendering/diagram transforms the hand-sketches into a digital scene. Image courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture

“I do draw, in real time with my students, and with To bring the jury to their side, they pulled out all the my clients, and upside-down,” he says. “You have stops, using video, animation, voiceover, PowerPoint, access to ideas through the freehand sketch. Drawings a physical model, computer renderings, and a verbal are a type of communication that’s about building an presentation. argument and winning favor and support, particularly for a competition.” “We created an atmosphere with a backlit theatrical space where you entered a cube, with fabric all around He and Yoon demonstrated that ably in 2012, with their and a soft voiceover,” he says. “It was not just drawings, entry in the Audi Urban Future Initiative. Theirs was but an atmosphere that set the tone for these very among five finalists from around the world, each seeking elaborate videos.” to solve mobility issues in specific urban corridors. The voiceover guided the jury through a storyboard with a

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Höweler + Yoon selected the heavily traveled I-95 “Boswash” corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C. narrative and sequence of images, along with a series of three- as their design challenge. They called their set of solutions minute video clips played sequentially in a continuous loop, “Shareway.” articulating the firm’s research and architectural solutions.

Aiming to win, they developed a cutting-edge, multimedia “We translated properties into forms, and research into presentation for the Audi jury. Taking time to work through concrete proposals – into real buildings, cityscapes, cars, and it thoroughly, they started with sketches to develop ideas, streetscapes,” he says. “Even the eyeglasses were futuristic and then exploited them with every possible technology safety glasses that gave everybody a feeling of being a little bit available. into the future.”

“It was probably the most extreme presentation we’ve ever Höweler + Yoon didn’t just redesign the road, the car, or the done,” he says. “It was a six-month effort for a six-minute streets of the city. They tackled hardware/software interface presentation in Istanbul.” solutions for booking tickets and driving on new kinds of 110 Chapter 14 Höweler + Yoon

This digital sketch represents the start of a commute, in the home of the future. The scene depicts future mobility services embedded within the everyday surfaces of the future home. The layering of interactive environments within an interior architectural environment illustrates the integration of networks and data to facilitate the commute. Collaging together fanciful future interfaces with elements of a contemporary residential environment aids in evoking a not-too-distant future of technological imagination. Image courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture

roads. They looked at transportation not as a matter of They eschewed the illusion of a resolution from a single, getting from Point A to Point B, but as a form of shared social computer-generated photo rendering. Instead, and over time, connectivity. they thoughtfully developed and demonstrated their solutions in immersive ways. Conceived as a retrofit to rail, highway, and the surrounding landscape, the entire “Shareway” project hinges on Their efforts paid off – in spades. In late 2012, Höweler + the turning radius for the trains that helped create this Yoon’s entry easily trumped four other finalists from nation. “It’s a product of what’s already there,” he says. “It’s Istanbul, Mumbai, Sao Paolo, and China’s Pearl River Valley. about the geometry of speed.” “I think the jury appreciated the design of the whole system Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 They proposed that rail traffic, both commercial and of how to move in the city,” he says. commuter, be bundled into tubes in the airspace above I-95, with automobile and truck traffic bundled similarly, and also Their sophisticated visual presentation, though – one space for bicycles and pedestrians. They proposed shared that started with access to ideas through the freehand ownership for battery-powered cars to shuttle commuters sketch – surely made the difference. to and from major urban areas. They also suggested shared ownership of nearby homes and farms. Chapter 14 111 Winning Favor

This rendering of a mobility “Connector” in the city of the future is a speculative structure that illustrates connectivity between different modes of transportation, including an autonomous driving shared vehicle. The red road suggests a future road surface that is different from today, maybe one that is more intelligent and more sustainable. The train in the background, the cyclist switching from bicycle to shared car in the foreground, are all part of the narrative of the scene, conveying a future urban mobility environment that is multi-model, offering both choice and ease. The digital scene borrows from stop motion aesthetics to demonstrate the smooth and technologically facilitated transition from bicycle to car. Image courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture

Name: Eric Höweler, AIA LEED AP Registration: • Registered Architect, New York, District of Columbia, Firm: Höweler + Yoon Architecture LLP/MY Studio New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Boston, MA Arizona, Louisiana Education: • American Institute of Architects • Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art and • LEED Accredited Professional Planning, Bachelor of Architecture 1994 • NCARB • Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art and Selected awards and honors: Planning, Master of Architecture 1996 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 2006: PS1 MoMA Young Architects Program, Finalist Professional experience: 2007: • Design Vanguard, Architecture Record • Kohn Pedersen Fox, Associates PC, New York; Associate • Emerging Voices, Architecture League, New York Principal (1995–2002) • Boston Society of Architects Award, Outside-In • Diller + Scofidio, New York; Senior Designer (2002–2005) Loft • Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP, Boston, MA; • Boston Society of Architects Award, Low Rez /Hi Fi Principal (2004 to present) • Merit Award, InForm Magazine, 1110 Vermont Ave • Chicago Prize, Net Xings 3rd Place, 2007 Academic experience: 2008: • R + D Award, Architect Magazine, August, Hover • Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; • Merit Award, Residential Architect magazine, Cambridge, MA (2006–2007) Outside-In Loft • Assistant Professor in Architecture; Harvard University, 2010: Nomination for Young Architects Award, National Graduate School of Design; Cambridge, MA (2008– AIA present) 112 Chapter 14 Höweler + Yoon

2012: • Audi Urban Future Award • Architectural Review AR+D Emerging Architects • Boston Society of Architects Honor Award, Award, Chengdu Skycourts Chengdu Skycourts • Chicago Athaneum, American Architecture • Annual Design Review, Architect Magazine, March, Awards, Chengdu Skycourts Chengdu Skycourts • 2014 Mies Crown Hall Architecture Prize, Finalist, 2013: • AIA DC, Merit Award, 2345 MLK BSA Space

Name: J. Meejin Yoon, AIA, FAAR 2005: • Young Architects Award, Architectural League New York Firm: Höweler + Yoon Architecture LLP/MY Studio • 2005 Architectural Lighting Design Award Boston, MA • 2005 Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Education: Prize Fellowship • Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art and 2006: PS 1 MoMA YAP Finalist Planning, Bachelor of Architecture (First-Ranking), 1995 2007: • Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the • Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Master of Fine Arts Grant Architecture in Urban Design (with Distinction), 1997 • Design Vanguard, Architecture Record • Emerging Voices, Architectural League New York Academic experience: Associate Professor with Tenure, • Boston Society of Architects Honor Award, Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Outside-In Loft Technology, Cambridge, MA (2001 to present) • Boston Society of Architects Honor Award, Low Professional experience: Rez/Hi Fi • MY Studio, Boston, MA; Principal (2001 to present) • Wade Award, Massachusetts Institute of • Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP, Boston, MA; Technology Principal (2004 to present) • Chicago Prize, third place 2008: • United States Artist Award Registration: • R + D Award, Architect Magazine • Registered Architect, New York • Athena Award, RISD/Target Emerging Designer • License: 033579-1 Award Selected awards and honors: • Merit Award, Residential Architect magazine, 1995: • Degree Marshal, Cornell University Outside-In Loft • Clifton Beckwith Brown Medal for highest 2012: • Audi Urban Future Award cumulative average in Architecture Design, • Annual Design Review, Architect magazine, Cornell University Chengdu Skycourts

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 • 1995 AIA Henry Adams Gold Medal for top- • Boston Society of Architects Honor Award, ranking graduating student, Cornell University Chengdu Skycourts 1997: Fulbright Fellowship to Seoul, Korea • Irwin Sizer Award for Most Significant 2002: • New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs Improvement to MIT Education Grant 2013: The American Architecture Award by The Chicago • The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Athenaeum/The European Centre for Architecture Grant Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 15 in situ studio: Obsessed with Drawing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 15 115 Obsessed with Drawing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Chasen residence, site plan 116 Chapter 15 in situ studio

Erin Lewis has been drawing all her life, as has Matthew Griffith, her partner at the Raleigh, North Carolina studio they call in situ. Ironically, though, Griffith didn’t begin to pursue it intensely until he enrolled in Davidson College – as a math major.

“I took seven drawing and printmaking courses there,” Griffith says. “I’d gone to a high school in a small town in the Ozarks, with no art classes at all.”

“I started in second or third grade, drawing for my friends,” Lewis says. “I’d ask in the morning what they wanted in their dream house. Then I’d draw house plans for them and present them at recess. I was obsessed with floor plans.”

These days, they’re both obsessed with drawing in their four-year-old architecture practice, with the two new associates they’ve recently brought on board, and with the clients for whom they’re designing some of the city’s more innovative residential work. It’s their way of thinking in three dimensions, while they sketch in two.

“About half our clients are anxious about whether what’s in their heads can become a reality – especially if it’s a new house,” Lewis says. “If it’s a renovation, we can come in and walk around, and we’re sketching the entire time.” Erin Sterling Lewis, AIA, and Matthew Griffith, AIA. Photo by

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Richard Leo Johnson At the first client meeting, they’re listening. At the second, they’ll present their drawings – usually formalized versions of “In staff meetings on Mondays, it’s inevitable that everyone suggestive, diagrammatic sketches from internal discussions turns their paper over to draw details of what we’re working at the office. Sometimes, they’re accompanied by three- on,” Lewis says. “The meeting agenda is on one side and the dimensional models. But always, there’s the ever-present trace sketches are on the other.” paper – because they’ve found that their clients like looking at it for a visual conversation. The pair have created a culture of design based on 24/7 drawing. An initial sketch might sit on a table for a “You can talk about what you’re doing and sketch it,” Griffith week while all four designers in the studio work on its says. “Erin and I both know how to write upside-down – the development. One architect might start with very light lines pen is an extension of our mouths.” relating structure to site, while another comes in with heavier lines for the actual building and another might add color for That’s true even for internal meetings. landscape. Chapter 15 117 Obsessed with Drawing

Chasen residence, long section

“It’s so much fun,” Lewis says. “I have one drawing where we went back and forth, drawing over and over on it, coloring it and using Whiteout – but we could never show that to the client.”

Instead, she’ll look at it, wonder how anyone else could understand it, all the while appreciating the essence of the idea expressed – one that she can transform from a scribble to a technical drawing that a contractor can easily understand.

Those early sketches are deliberately energetic and messy, and intently engaged in capturing a kernel of truth, as well as its Chasen residence, diagram push/pull scale and proportion. Moreover, they’re part of an important process where failure is an option. “You have to be willing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 to get the ugly out,” Griffith says. “One of the richest, most to the site – that it’s not about the sink in the master suite, layered, and tactile things an architect can do is think while but about adjacencies and how the building fits on the land.” sketching.” They usually don’t touch a computer until they’re about a Line weight is taken very seriously – the lighter the line, the quarter of the way through the design process. A computer, less important. And the more time spent with the drawing, Griffith says, offers the capacity for intense precision, but if a the better it gets. By the time it’s presented to the client, it’s a designer jumps into it too early, it requires more knowledge set of concepts to be considered. than he or she should have at that point. “For truly original work, you have to pursue something you don’t really know,” “Usually it’s two or three design solutions, with a lot of pen he says. and pencil lines, coloring and landscape, and sometimes even that first rough drawing is presented,” Lewis says. “We’ll say They’ll work through sections, site plans, and models to start that it’s still diagrammatic, and about how the building relates thinking about different scales, switching back and forth, 118 Chapter 15 in situ studio

Chasen residence, section

weighing one solution against another. They sketch to record Chasen residence, diagram them, and to understand the relationship between landscape, building, scale, and proportion. Drawing, Lewis says, is a tool that allows an architect to use her brain – never thinking about a single issue, but all the elements involved in the design.

Her partner agrees. “Some projects are handed down to you from the architecture gods, and they make sense early,” Griffith says. “But others take forever, and most require 20, 30, or 50 drawings. Sometimes it’s just one squiggle and sometimes it’s a series of intensely rendered things.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 By the time they’re presenting to clients in that second meeting, they’ve also conducted a survey of topography, setbacks, and utilities. “It’s pretty technical – pretty intimidating stuff,” Lewis says. “But we always walk the client through that first, and then, with trace paper overlays, show them where we were on the site when we walked it. We’ll show them that beech tree, and not just where it is, but how its canopy will affect the house.” Chasen residence, Raleigh, NC. Photo by Richard Leo Johnson

It is essentially an orientation session with drawings, so And it’s their primary means of communication. “It’s all very that the client can become comfortable with reading visual,” she says. “Our biggest deliverable is a drawing.” a plan. “It’s a whole new language,” she says. “It’s like reading music.” Which is a pretty good reason to obsess over it. Chapter 15 119 Obsessed with Drawing

Name: Matthew Griffith Name: Erin Sterling Lewis

Firm: in situ studio, Raleigh, NC Firm: in situ studio, Raleigh, NC

Education: Education: Bachelor of Architecture, University of • B.S. Mathematics, Davidson College, 1996 Kentucky, 2002 • M. Arch in Urban Design, NC State University, 2002 Affiliation: American Institute of Architects Affiliation: American Institute of Architects Awards and accolades: 2012: • Residential Architect magazine: 15 Young Firms to Watch • AIA Triangle Design Award (2012 Tour): Stoneridge 2013: George Matsumoto Prize for North Carolina Modernist Residential Design, North Carolina Modernist Houses Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 16 Léon Krier: Communicating Complex Information Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 16 123 Communicating Complex Information

Resort in Paralimni. Léon Krier and Jamshid Sepehri; rendering by Jamshid Sepehri

Editor’s note: When we asked Michael Graves to participate in this At this stage, the computer does not allow sketching book, he suggested that no current book on drawing by hand would without being gross. However, whether you use the hand by be complete without a chapter on Léon Krier. We made a query of manipulating a pencil or pressing keys, it is the individual gift Mr. Krier, who’s known not just for his sketches but for his work which counts more than the medium it uses. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 in New Urbanism around the world. Luckily, he agreed to answer our questions: When did you begin to draw?

I discovered the pleasure when drawing airplanes. Why is drawing by hand important in architecture? What were the circumstances? Given talent and vocation, drawing by hand is one of the pleasures of life. Even though architecture once was I went to a boarding school close to the American fighter inconceivable without hand drawing, the computer clearly base of Spangdahlem, Germany. With a friend, we spent changes that condition. There are young people who hours spotting planes. He encouraged me to draw planes and conceive designs without hand drawing, without plan and then even invent some. I also did graphic work for classical section even. The use of the computer allows them to music concerts. develop parts of the brain which were otherwise atrophied. 124 Chapter 16 Léon Krier

Mirage V. Drawing by Léon Krier (1961)

Program for Jeunesse Musicale Concerts Luxembourg. Léon Krier (1966) Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 When my brother Rob got me interested in architecture, I started doodling projects which I regularly sent him for comments and went to a lot to libraries. Books and photocopies were expensive, and I did tracings from books.

I never draw in the open air, whether it is a building, a landscape, or a person. I always memorize the objects of interest, then draw them when at home, preferably lying in bed. The recording process can sometimes take hours, or sometimes just a few fleeting seconds in a car. The delayed drawing paradoxically turns the recorded object almost into your own. On the whole I am more inspired by vernacular Project for Air Terminal Luxembourg. Léon Krier (1965) than by monumental architecture. Chapter 16 125 Communicating Complex Information

Gasworks in Frankfurt am Main, tracing from Wasmuth Monatshefte 1925. Tracing by Léon Krier (1967)

Farmhouse near Chambery, France, glimpsed from a the car and As I didn’t find a master or a school directing me toward what reconstructed later. Léon Krier (1976) I ultimately wanted, it is by drawing objects of interest and of increasing complexity that I taught myself.

Derby Town Center and later of editing the “Black Book” Is there a particular architect whose drawings you in 1973 to 1974. My main objective was to render the admire? graphic presentation of his projects, past and present, in a Despite all reservations, Le Corbusier was and remains my coherent graphic style and presentation. In fact, the book’s first love regarding drawing and painting, seconded only by scenography is built in the cinematic manner of Le Corbusier. Otto Wagner. Stirling was game – and we had great fun. He was a great editor of drawings, deleting everything which was not Then Palladio’s woodcuts, the line drawings by Louis essential and being very meticulous at having the right line Bruyère, K.F. Schinkel, Ingres, De Chirico, Walter Pichler, weight for the right purpose. When the Hatje monograph on Wolff Meyer Christian, those of archeologists like Friedrich Paul Rudolph came out with those stunning drawings, his Krischen, Joseph T. Clark, Francis Henry Bacon, Karl only comment was: “too many lines.” Gruber, Letarouilly, D’Arcy Thomson, Lavater, Surveys of Vernacular Buildings around the World, the White Pine You contributed also to Seaside in Florida; how Series in America, Nautical and Aeronautical cutaways, and did the hand-sketch contribute there? 19th-century engineering drawings of machines and bridges. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 The drawings which inspire me and which I emulated are When Seaside was conceived by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, generally of a laconic nature, almost without expression but Robert Davis, their followers, and friends, hand drawing was vibrant in precision and poetry. Growing up with Hergé’s king. Computers were in their architectural infancy, and all Tintin drawings strongly marked my preferences, as well as involved were superb draftsmen. the famous “Ligne Claire” style which was influenced by cursive calligraphy and the “Haar und Grundstrich” style of My hard line drawings were usually preceded by hundreds neoclassical drawing and handwriting. of freehand drawings responding to questions from Andres or Robert or whoever the town architect was. Indeed, that’s what I’m exclusively doing now. Hard line work is done What kind of drawing did you do while you by associates working on computers far away from where I worked with James Stirling? am. In Seaside my attempts and efforts were directed (not After a year of working on actual building projects, I was quite successfully) to encourage and inform a straight wood in charge of competitions like Siemens Headquarters and vernacular, and avoiding Victorian frills. 126 Chapter 16 Léon Krier

Sketch for Derby Town Center competition. Léon Krier (1970)

How does drawing by hand help an architect communicate with constituencies?

For me, hand drawings are an efficient way to communicate complex information. I do not try to seduce clients. My driving intention is to communicate a solution to a problem, often independent of scale and specific dimensions. The precision I am interested in is not one to do with dimensional exactitude but with conceptual and aesthetic coherence whether at the level of a furniture detail, the construction of an entablature, the composition of a building ensemble, or Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 the geometry of a town. We live in a period of dimensional and semantic excess. The art of tuning our environment to the right pitch is a craft which needs to be reinvented. Most users have such low expectations of their daily environs that they have come to like it, in its horror and shrillness.

What do you mean by saying: In the language of symbols, there can exist no misunderstanding?

That is a quote by the psychoanalyst Alexis Pontvik. Buildings are either named or nicknamed by users. The nicknames given to buildings reveal the true meaning of a Léon Krier, Seaside Belvedere Tower, Opus 36. Léon Krier (2004) building’s expression, albeit unintended by the designer. Chapter 16 127 Communicating Complex Information

caricatures reveal scandalous contradictions and absurdities which we are daily obliged to swallow as normal, as unavoidable facts of life.

Suburbanism is quite simply unaffordable as a global proposition. It is an epiphenomenon of the fossil fuel economy, and towns and societies have to be able to live beyond its demise. Traditional architecture and urbanism are not a matter of sentimentality but of survival.

My drawings are not contradictory. They render unsustainable contradictions evident, and reveal their scandalous nature.

Ultimately, what is the intent of your drawings?

My caricatures are teaching instruments demonstrating the rational foundations of my architectural and urban projects.

Léon Krier. Image courtesy of Léon Krier Where do you find your inspiration? In the pleasures and pains I experience. Your sketches have a definite point of view when it comes to classicism versus modernism. What are you trying to communicate with them?

I demonstrate the self-evident; namely the categorical

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 superiority of traditional architecture and urbanism. My 128 Chapter 16 Léon Krier

Léon Krier Teaching experience: • Inaugural Robert A.M. Stern Professor, Yale University Léon Krier is a world-renowned architect, urban planner, • Louis I. Kahn- Davenport-, Eero Saarinen Professor, Yale architectural theorist, and pioneer in promoting the University technological, ecological, and social rationality and • Jefferson Professor, University of Virginia modernity of traditional urbanism and architecture. He is • Professor of Architecture, Princeton University considered to be the “Godfather” of the New Urbanism • Professor of Architecture and Town Planning, movement. He started his career in 1968 working with Architectural Association and Royal College of Arts James Stirling in London, following a stint at the University of Stuttgart. Since then, he has combined his practice Awards and recognition: with writing and teaching, serving as a Professor at the 1985: • Personal Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Architectural Association and the Royal College of Arts in • Berlin Prize for Architecture London, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, 1987: Jefferson Memorial Gold Medal and Yale University, and has guest-lectured at a number of 1995: Chicago American Institute of Architects Award institutions, including Notre Dame. Since 1987, Mr. Krier 1997: • European Culture Prize has been HRH the Prince of Wales’ advisor, and responsible • Silver Medal of the Academie Française for the master-planning and architectural coordination of 2000: Personal Exhibition, Furniture designed by Léon Krier, Poundbury, the Duchy of Cornwall’s urban development Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin in Dorset, UK. In addition, he has worked as an industrial 2003: The Inaugural Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical designer for Giorgetti since 1990. and Traditional Architecture, Notre Dame 2006: Athéna Medal of the Congress for the New Urbanism Education: Architecture, University of Stuttgart Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 17 Tom Kundig: The Poetry of the Sketch Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 17 131 The Poetry of the Sketch

an artist and an intuitive physicist – an intelligent guy,” he says. “He was somebody figuring out how to do something really fantastic by crafting his own ideas out of wood, metal, and porcelain.”

As a student, Kundig learned to draw not in art class, but from a sixth-grade science and math teacher, who taught him how to sketch ideas out effectively. When he got to college, he wasn’t interested in architecture. Rather, he wanted to know about physics and the nature of play – about what could be done with a serious understanding of both.

“I’d always been interested in the hard sciences,” he says. “And though I was closer to the natural world through science, I felt it lacked art and poetry.” So he shifted his gears toward design, believing architecture to be the perfect union of the rational and the poetic. Now he follows the work of architects Glenn Murcutt and Peter Zumthor, and admires that of the late Pierre Chareau. Still, the natural world is his strongest influence.

He’s developed into an avid and devoted mountain climber, working his way up, over, and through the peaks of Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia. And he’s attracted to finding the right solutions to propel him along Tom Kundig, Olson Kundig Architects. Photo by Kyle Johnson the way. “Mountain climbing isn’t about getting to the top of the mountain,” he says. “It’s about how elegantly, cleanly, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Tom Kundig’s architecture is about connecting art and efficiently, and lightly you get to the top. It’s all about physics, linking inside with outside, and placing small houses problem-solving as you go – much like architecture.” in big, wild landscapes for maximum joy. An intuitive architect who responds to context and client, But both his art and his designs are inspired by an interior he’s influenced also by the endless landscapes of the West. milieu. “Everything comes from inside the mind,” he says. “It And though some of his better-known houses are also stores all your experiences, history, wisdom, and influences. diminutive, he also works on projects of all sizes. Most open It’s the library for the hand.” up to nature in big ways – because his clients would rather be outside in their surroundings than inside the walls of their His own personal library is stocked partially with lessons homes. learned during his childhood in Spokane, Washington, where he served an apprenticeship of sorts as a laborer and “It’s a platform to get out into the surrounding context,” he carpenter’s assistant for sculptor Harold Balazs. “Harold was says of his typical design. “It tends to be a small, transparent 132 Chapter 17 Tom Kundig

Diagrammatic sketch for pivoting window wall, Chicken Point Cabin. Tom Kundig

house close to the landscape. It can open up the house to And though a computer may be an effective way to its context out at the edge of something, or close it in, in an disseminate information or allow small details to be easily intimate way, so that it’s protected.” copied, he finds it also to be a “dumb” instrument, in that it cannot change anything about the information – either Before he designs anything at all, he’ll first sketch through rightly or wrongly. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 it on paper. “More than any other tool of architecture, the skill of using the pencil develops the instinct of design He believes computers have been a problem in the past; and the soul of making places,” he says. “There’s a similar whether they’ll be a problem in the future is up for grabs. process at work when you’re learning about the materials and A sketch, on the other hand, is a human connection, with construction.” all the meaning and nuance that word implies. “I think that, to date, a computer image does not hold that direct He believes that freehand drawing is the freshest, most connection,” he says. “It’s possible that the connection will intuitive expression of the idea in the brain – while get closer as the computer evolves, but right now, I don’t a computer serves almost as a cloaking device. “It’s a think that’s happened.” physiological connection, like using your voice for singing. But unlike singing, which is somewhat ephemeral, drawing The drawing, he believes, connects to the mind through the leaves a direct mark,” he says. “A computer – like an audio hand. “The development of that connection can feel forced recording – is a type of filter, a distancing layer.” and clumsy, until increasing skills leads to that transcendent Chapter 17 133 The Poetry of the Sketch

Concept diagram sketches, Chicken Point Cabin. Tom Kundig

moment, when the hand makes a direct, intuitive connection to the mind,” he says. “It doesn’t just happen with drawing – it also happens with tennis, skiing, and climbing.”

While artist studies by Michelangelo and Picasso still resonate with him, and working sketches by Scarpa continue to inspire him, his own art is challenged by the demands of his profession. “It takes practice – thousands of feet of lines to earn the ability to translate what’s in the mind to a clear graphic on the page,” he says. “And all architects face a challenge: keeping up their skill at drawing at the same time Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 they are busy running a firm, attending meetings, and traveling.”

But the clients love it. Drawing with them helps in the communication process. “Ultimately there’s a belief on the part of the client that architecture is the ancient art of making a meaningful shelter or place,” he says. “It follows naturally that drawing – another ancient skill – is meaningful to them.” Concept sketch for Chicken Point Cabin. Tom Kundig He draws throughout the life of all of his projects, starting with rough sketches – his early attempts to work through and Perhaps the most iconic and poetic of his houses is respond to issues. They precede anything put into a computer, the Chicken Point Cabin, sited on a cove on Lake and once technical drawings are developed, he sketches over Hayden in Idaho and surrounded by the Bitterroot them to develop and refine the work. Mountains. The owners – he described them as 134 Chapter 17 Tom Kundig

Concept diagram and elevation sketch, Chicken Point Cabin. Tom Kundig Section drawing, Chicken Point Cabin. Tom Kundig

adventurous risk-takers who embrace life vigorously – To him, a pencil is a thousand-year-old tool that fits his hand asked for a little weekend cabin that opens to its like a hammer fits a carpenter’s, enabling him to express surroundings. Kundig designed a tough, concrete-and-steel his thoughts. He uses sketches to create a narrative – to tent in the woods, with an enormous, 20-foot-x-30-foot respond to client needs. “A sketch is a thinking model – a window that lifts away like a garage door. The 3,400-square- god, a Buddha, and a mentor,” he says. “It’s visceral, poetic foot cabin sleeps ten. work.”

“I like the way the house opens up to the outside,” he says. While working through the Chicken Point Cabin, he drew “Basically it dissolves the line between what’s inside and both with his clients and by himself. The three of them what’s outside – you’re almost compelled to go outside.” would talk, and he’d retreat for a time, then return to present The cabin also straddles a second line – one that lies new sketches. As they discussed it, he’d sketch changes while Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 between a forest and a meadow that descends toward taking in new information. a beach. The house, in essence, is a door that reveals and articulates the relationship between all three. “The All in all, he estimates that he made about 100 sketches house itself is tactile, and rather physical, to reinforce the and drawings for the project. “They tied together the entire connections to the outdoors – with the big doors and the process, from beginning to end,” he says. “They were the window walls,” he says. thinking string throughout the project, even with my team members.” Before he lifted pencil to paper, Kundig visited the site with his clients, letting them talk, learning what they thought In essence, his sketches served as vessels for the poetry of one about the property, and getting to know them as friends. of the most profound and iconic projects in his portfolio. Before he sketched, he listened. Chapter 17 135 The Poetry of the Sketch

Exterior, Chicken Point Cabin, Olson Kundig Architects. Photo by Benjamin Benschneider Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

View from primary living space, Chicken Point Cabin, Olson Kundig Architects. Photo by Benjamin Benschneider 136 Chapter 17 Tom Kundig

Name: Tom Kundig Kundig’s work has been recognized with over 100 design awards, including more than 50 awards from the American Firm: Olson Kundig Architects, Seattle, WA Institute of Architects (including 16 National Awards Education: consisting of nine National Honor Awards and seven 1977: • University of Washington, Bachelor of Arts in National Housing Awards). His work has appeared in Environmental Design hundreds of publications worldwide, including the New York • Member: Tau Sigma Delta – Architectural Times, the Telegraph, Architectural Record, Financial Times, Honorary Frame, A+U, Architectural Digest, and The Wall Street Journal; 1981: • University of Washington, Masters of Architecture as well as countless books, including two monographs on his • Magna cum Laude National AIA Scholar work, Tom Kundig: Houses and Tom Kundig: Houses 2, and the • Member: Phi Beta Kappa – Scholastic Honorary recently released volume by Diane Keaton, House. In 2011, he was named to the Wallpaper* 150 as a key individual who Major awards: During the past three decades, Tom Kundig has influenced, inspired, and improved the way we live, work, has received some of the world’s highest design honors, and travel. Kundig’s work spans the globe, with projects on including a National Design Award from the Smithsonian four continents. Significant past projects include The Pierre, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and an Academy Chicken Point Residence, Art Stable, Mission Hill Family Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts Estate Winery, Delta Shelter, Studio House, and the Rolling and Letters. In 2012, he was inducted into Interior Design Huts. magazine’s Hall of Fame. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 18 Daniel Libeskind: An Act of Faith Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 18 139 An Act of Faith Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Daniel Libeskind, World Trade Center (1 of 3), 2003, pencil on parchment, 22.5 x 30 inches 140 Chapter 18 Daniel Libeskind

Despite the media outcry over his unusual entry, Libeskind’s first idea eventually prevailed over all others. Better yet, the museum actually got built.

“The end-product is very much like the original intuitive sketch that I created out of passion and intensity,” he says. And he also offers this advice: “Bring heart to what you’re doing – not to impress the client, but to create something out of a drawing.”

If that sounds like sage counsel from someone trained in the arts, it is. Before Libeskind was an architect, he was an artist. And before that, he was a musician – one who performed with a very young Itzhak Perelman. He views his professional development, from music to art to designs for the built environment, as a natural progression.

Daniel Libeskind. © Ilan Besor “Architecture is the mother of the arts – it’s the summit of geometry, history, poetry, music, drawing, and dance – all of the arts,” he says.

Aspiring architects today might take a cue from Giotto At a loss to remember when he started sketching, he di Bondone and his 14th-century bid to win the Catholic knows it was an obsession from the time he was a boy, and Church’s commission for the Campanile of the Florence that it remains so today. He emigrated from Poland to the Cathedral, Daniel Libeskind suggests. US with his family in 1959, at the age of 13. Because he spoke no English when he enrolled at his first school in “He gave the Pope a perfect circle, drawn freehand,” he says the Bronx, he was placed in a class for those with low IQs. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 of the Italian architect who was also a master of the fresco. There, he communicated in the language of the hand-drawn “And he got the job.” sketch.

Libeskind, faced five years ago with a passing deadline for “We were all asked to draw a dog, and I won a prize,” he says. a competition to design the Royal Ontario Museum, also “I couldn’t speak, but I could draw.” resorted to sketching by hand – with a fervor that won him special dispensation, too. In 1965 he became a United States citizen. A few years later, he was immersed in Cooper Union’s first-year “I realized that the deadline had expired, and that it required foundation program – a Bauhaus-inspired studio for many panels,” he says. “I didn’t have the time, but I was potential artists and architects – fully engaged in the inspired. So I drew sketches on napkins.” drawing process, copying from the masters at the Morgan Library and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and sketching And he was selected as a competitor. from life as well. Chapter 18 141 An Act of Faith

Concept sketches. Daniel Libeskind, © SDL

“It was real drawing with real artists, so you could decide the way it comes out. It may not be pretty, but it’s about the whether to be an architect or an artist, with all the rigors of mind and the eye and whatever you believe in. It’s an act of what it is to draw from life,” he says. “Drawing from life is not faith.” an abstraction or a metaphor – it’s true.” Libeskind worked briefly in the offices of both Richard Meier He earned his undergraduate degree in architecture from and Peter Eisenman. For years, he was known primarily as a Cooper Union in 1970, and his postgraduate degree in the theoretician, with few built projects. That changed in 1999 history and theory of architecture from the University of when he designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin, almost a Essex in 1972. From there, his career arc has been near- decade after the Berlin Wall had fallen, and East and West legendary: He was a Visiting and Guest Professor at the Paul Germany were reunified. Cret Chair of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, the Louis Kahn Chair and the Davenport Chair at Yale, the “It was finished, and some exhibition designers called us First Frank O. Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto, and asked for our three-dimensional models,” he says. “We the University of London, the University of Houston, the said: ‘No, we did it with ink, rulers and trigonometry.’ It was University of Illinois, the University of Technology in Graz, probably the last building in the 20th century to be done the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and completely by hand.” the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a Senior Fulbright and taught at the Helsinki Technical University. But that’s how it was done then. Even now Libeskind Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 He was a Professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee admits he uses no computer – and draws with his iPad only in Berlin, the University of California Los Angeles, the occasionally. Like music, drawing is an adventure for him, University of Kentucky, and Unit Master at the Architectural and a way to enter the world of possibilities. Association in London. “It’s not about being busy – it’s a meditation and part of a For a time, he served as architect in residence at Cranbrook task,” Libeskind says. “The drawing takes you somewhere Academy of Art, where he was a stern taskmaster, looking at where you’ve never been before. The structure and light of portfolios from Cranbrook applicants, then asking them to drawing opens you up to another realm.” draw a horse. He notes that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also favored drawing “It’s a shortcut – ‘Can you draw a horse?’ If they couldn’t lyrically by hand. “His partner told me that Mies used to do do it, they’d never be architects,” he says. “You can tell the the trees and the vegetation on the drawings, and someone authentic from the inauthentic. It’s like a birth – it comes out else did the hard lines,” he says. “Now, that’s a master.” 142 Chapter 18 Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind, World Trade Center (2 of 3), 2003, pencil on Night: May 2011. © Silverstein Properties parchment, 22.5 x 30 inches Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Libeskind believes that those who are good at architecture The tool of the pencil marks the start of the design process must possess the ability to draw. They may not be da Vincis, for the 120 architects in his firm’s offices in New York, Milan, but they need to own an intuitive feeling for the sacred nature and Zurich. There’s no requirement that they draw, but it’s of creating something new out of almost nothing. There’s certainly appreciated, as are skills with model-making. Still, no committee involved; instead, it’s a deliberate act by an one gets the sense that in a Libeskind office, the pencil individual – an extension of the mind, directly from the hand. trumps all else.

“With paper and a tool, you can create a world of mysticism “The lead pushes down, and it comes out of the hand – not and beauty, just as Bernini and Michelangelo did,” he says. out of technology,” he says. “The computer comes much later. “I’m an acolyte of these masters. Whenever I go to museums, First the drawing, then the perspective, then maybe a water I look for architectural drawings – they’re on humble surfaces, color, then a little model out of paper or wood, and then to but they’re divine.” the computer.” Chapter 18 143 An Act of Faith

World Trade Center site in relation to Statue of Liberty. © SDL

He believes that any student who wants to learn how to become an architect today should pay attention to what Michelangelo had to say about it: “All you have to do is learn Daniel Libeskind, World Trade Center (3 of 4), 2003, ink and to draw,” he says. crayon on brown paper, 9 x 9 inches

“Obsess about it. Get intense. It’s a mirror – you can see who The result? Winning designs for major projects like the post- you are. It shows where you have talent, and where you don’t. 9/11 master plan for the reconstruction of the World Trade It’s a path-book to the future. Even the things that you forget, Center site, at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Debates, the drawing will remember.” discussions, and alterations may have swirled in controversy around the original plan, but the broad strokes from Studio And given his choice between the significance of a drawing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Daniel Libeskind remain intact and effective in reinforcing or a building, it’s no surprise that he favors the sketch. “We how the site relates to its location – and how it’s seen, close underestimate how important it is – it’s maybe even more up and from afar. important than the skyscraper,” he says.

“For Ground Zero, we did all the sketches and all the Because good architecture is preceded by art. A building itself possibilities of what it could look like from the skyline, from may become a highly valued piece of civic art – like Giotto’s an office or from a pedestrian’s point of view,” he says. “I often Campanile, or Libeskind’s Ground Zero – but it starts out show the original sketch – because, sure, the buildings have drawn from life, in an act of faith. changed and some of the details have too – but the current buildings are close to what I intended.” 144 Chapter 18 Daniel Libeskind

World Trade Center, west side skyline, revised May, 2011. © Silverstein Properties

Name: Daniel Libeskind 2002: America-Israeli Cultural Foundation Award 2002: Holocaust Educational Trust Award Firms: 2004: The First Cultural Ambassador to the US for • Studio Daniel Libeskind, New York Architecture by the US Department of State, as part • Architekt Daniel Libeskind, Zurich Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 of the Culture Connect program • Libeskind Architettura and Libeskind Design, Milan 2007: • Gold Medal for Architecture at the National Arts Education: Club • 1970 B. Arch Summa Cum Laude – The Cooper Union • The Commander’s cross of the Order of Merit School of Architecture, New York, USA at the residence of the Consul General of • 1971 M.A. History and Theory of Architecture – Germany University of Essex, School of Comparative Studies, 2010: Buber-Rosenzweig Medal from DKR (German Essex, Great Britain Coordinating Council of Societies for Christian– Jewish Cooperation) Major awards: 2011: AIANY Medal of Honor 1999: The German Architecture Prize for the Jewish 2012: AIA National Service Medal Museum Berlin 2001: Hiroshima Art Prize: Award given to an artist whose work promotes peace Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 19 Brian MacKay-Lyons: Instinctive and Quick Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 19 147 Instinctive and Quick

“You gotta draw fast because the car’s going 100 miles an hour,” he says. “You draw instinctively and quickly – it’s drawing from life.”

He uses the abstraction of the architectural parti to invite his clients to leave their tastes at the door, and take a conceptual cruise with him.

“People say: ‘You must have great clients to do buildings like you do,’” he says. “And I say: ‘Yes – but I take them on an intellectual journey out of their comfort zones, far away from what they were thinking.’”

He’s found that people really get his abstractions. Early on, he learned from architect Charles Moore that people respect an open-handed way of dealing with a design project.

That’s true in part because he insists on a highly sensitive interface with them. “You sit at the table, eye-to-eye, and they’re talking and you’re asking questions with a pen,” he says.

Eye contact is all-important. “Their eyes tell you everything –

Brian MacKay-Lyons. Photo by Michael Kohna you can read them,” he says. “You’re having a conversation, and a drawing happens – ‘You mean this? Or this? Or what Clients willing to ride along on an architectural journey with about this?’” Brian MacKay-Lyons may feel the sudden urge to tighten Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 their seatbelts. From that nimble social interaction, hard-wired to their brains, a pre-approved plan begins to emerge. It’s modified He’s a driven man on an intense mission. over time, revisited and redrawn as the project moves along. He draws it, scans it, and sends it – and it becomes a record “There’s an hour on site, then two hours together in a bar or for future reference. coffee shop,” he says. “I tell them that in a half-day, they’ll have a concept.” “It is not an immaculate conception” he says. “By the end of a project we’ll have lots of parti drawings, and maybe the best He’ll head back to his Nova Scotia studio, pick up pen and is not the first. It’s a check-up – is it clear or not? Can it be paper, and draw with speed-bound zeal reminiscent of the clearer still?” non-stop, bop-mad Dean Moriarity in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. That may be because he learned to sketch when he was But when the project is built, the parti is still germane. “It’s young, during long car rides at high speeds. a kind of discipline that I’ve learned to do – a cultivated 148 Chapter 19 Brian MacKay-Lyons

Ghost 5. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 intuition” he says. “You’re avoiding a short-circuit from the weights and an unsure and open-ended process,” he says. imagery of a picture.” “But you have to tell the computer exactly what to do. A computer is an autistic machine, capable only of being Photographs and computer-generated images are the bane of literal.” his existence. Once an architect gives an image to a client, he believes, it’s ingrained forever – and it’s dangerous for that Not that there are no computers in his office. There are. He reason. “It becomes fixed in their minds – they’ll never forget just doesn’t have much to do with them. it,” he says. “A computer needs to know exactly how many pixels long Thus his aversion to computer modeling, which he calls something is, and it’s good at being fast at dumb things,” he a kind of pornography – because with it, an architect is says. “It’s not able to do smart things with human interaction. looking at an image, rather than exploring an idea. “A Computers can’t think that fast because they’re not that hand-sketch can be half-complete, with different line smart. People are smart.” Chapter 19 149 Instinctive and Quick

Ghost 7. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Ghost 8. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons

Besides, there’s the line itself that’s the beginning of an idea Nowhere are his philosophies more self-evident than in and the most economic description for an architect’s intent. the Ghost Laboratory, a design/build program that his firm, It’s selective about what to leave out – not what to put in, as MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, sponsored each year a computer seeks. It’s about editing in the strategic sense. from 1994 to 2011. Its legacy is the Ghost Campus – ten structures on 60 acres in Nova Scotia, along with a “If I’m drawing the coast here in Nova Scotia, I’ll do the national honor award from the AIA and a hefty number of ocean horizon as the first line, the infinite line,” he says. enlightened young architects. “That line is the haiku – Matisse could do a drawing at 80 years of age, and capture the essence of a human figure in one He started it because as a young professor of architecture, mark.” he was frustrated with a university education system where 150 Chapter 19 Brian MacKay-Lyons

students enter a school because they’re interested in the environment, in making things, and in creating community – but often wind up studying something else altogether.

“They get there and all that gets unlearned in favor of the ‘emperor’s new clothes,’” he says.

Place, craft, and community are Ghost’s themes and structure. Ultimately, he designed it as a master class in drawing – so young architects could go home and sketch for themselves. “You can learn by being told something, or by doing something,” he says. Ghost 8. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons Each built project there started with architects and engineers sitting down together at a table in a barn and sketching. away that becomes a building, then goes back to being a Each resulted in a drawing or two that all agreed formed line, then goes down to the ocean. What’s great is that it’s a the essence of an idea. And each captured the energy and single line that shows priority – because a pencil drawing can conversation of the people at that table, as art director prioritize and emphasize what you want.” MacKay-Lyons led them through his process, drawing all the while. Then comes learning by making, on site – and the humility that accompanies it. Here, as with his clients, MacKay-Lyons “Some of them are like X-ray drawings through a building, leads his Ghost students out of their comfort zone. But it’s with different colored pens,” he says. “Or a line a half a mile not lessons in abstractions he’s after. Instead, he’s seeking the wisdom available from those who make things for a living – who work with lessons handed down during lifetimes of craftsmanship. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 “Architects think they’re smarter than people who make stuff, but they’re not,” he says. “I go to job sites, and people who can’t read or write teach me stuff every day.”

He may be driven, intense, and fast, but Brian Mackay-Lyons understands that at its best, architecture is a team sport.

And he plays it that way every day, usually with pen in hand.

Ghost 7. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons Chapter 19 151 Instinctive and Quick

Ghost 5. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Ghost 6. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons Ghost Campus, site plan. Drawing by Brian MacKay-Lyons 152 Chapter 19 Brian MacKay-Lyons

Name: Brian MacKay-Lyons FRAIC, RCA, (Hon) FAIA, NSAA, AAPEI, OAA, VT, NH

Firm: MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Ltd, Halifax, NS

Brian MacKay-Lyons received his Bachelor of Architecture from the Technical University of Nova Scotia in 1978 and his Master of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. In 1985, he founded Brian MacKay-Lyons Architecture Urban Design, and 20 years later partnered with Talbot Sweetapple to form MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Ltd. Houses designed in Atlantic Canada have made Brian a leading proponent of regionalist architecture worldwide. This recognition has led to a transition in the practice toward increased public and international commissions. MacKay-Lyons is the Director of the Ghost Architectural Laboratory and a full Professor of Architecture at Dalhousie University.

Aerial view of Ghost Campus. Photo by Manuel Schnell Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 20 Richard Meier: A Way of Learning Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 20 155 A Way of Learning Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

The Getty Center. © Richard Meier & Partners 156 Chapter 20 Richard Meier

How long have you been drawing? When did you start? Why? And how did the skill evolve?

I started drawing when I started practicing architecture, in architecture school. And when I was in school, there were no computers – everything was hand-drawn. Whether it was sketching, or with a T-square and triangle, it was all hand- drawn.

All the drawings for the Getty Center were made by hand, with ink on Mylar. There were 500 drawings that different people made at that time. It took 12 years, with 500 drawings on Mylar, and many, many more than that.

There are still some people in our office today who draw by hand, but relatively few. I look at what they’ve been doing – the computer’s all right, but drawing is still a factor. It’s not necessarily a skill I look for in architects coming into the firm, though. Richard Meier. Photo by Richard Phibbs Some of them will go to a job site and make notes and Editor’s note: Not many architects can claim the Pritzker Prize, a sketch of what needs to be looked at. It’s a means of the AIA Gold Medal, and the Praemium Imperiale from the communication that’s very important. Japanese government. But Richard Meier, who’s practiced now for more than 50 years, has earned all of these awards – and many Do you view it as a tool of investigation? If so, more. His career in architecture began with his first sketch in how? school at Cornell University, and it seems that he’s never looked Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 back – though the rest of us have, often in wonder. We interviewed Yes. I use yellow tracing paper to sketch out things and to him briefly in 2014. look at them, and to redo them. It’s all part of the process.

You’ve now opened a museum for your models Do you draw with your clients as you’re discussing and drawings. What can you tell us about it? projects with them?

We had a place in Long Island City for years, and the lease No. was over, so we’ve moved to Jersey City for more space – about 15,000 square feet now. It doesn’t contain all of our Where is it most important in the design process, models, because there are still a lot of them in the office. But and where does the computer enter the process? it houses models, some drawings in racks, and huge drawings that used to be in the office, but now can be stored properly. The hand drawing is there from the very beginning. The There are 400 models, and about 200 drawings. computer comes in, but that doesn’t mean you stop drawing Chapter 20 157 A Way of Learning

The Getty Center. © Richard Meier & Partners

What kinds of projects are you working on now, and how does the hand-sketch influence them?

We’re working on everything from houses to 70-storey buildings. They’re different projects, with different aspects to them. When you’re sitting down and working on things for a house – well, that’s very different from a 70-storey building.

The Getty Center. © Richard Meier & Partners What will eventually become of all your drawings? Will they remain in the museum and be open for as you continue. You use it to communicate with others in review and study? the office. They’ll be in the museum, and it will be open to the public.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Do you still draw daily? When you look at the drawings of other masters It depends on what’s going on. I do wish I had enough work like Le Corbusier, what are you looking for and to draw daily, but sometimes the work is not in that stage. what do you see? And what does he say to you through them? I do collages, and I like to do collages. There are all kinds of things. Some are sketches, and some are details, and some are bits of a building. There are volumes Do you keep a journal for sketching? and volumes of them. No, I keep yellow trace paper on my desk, but that’s all. It’s very important that any student should go and look at things and sketch them – it’s a way of learning. A favorite drawing instrument?

A pencil – a drafting pencil. 158 Chapter 20 Richard Meier

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 The Getty Center. Photo by Scott Frances/OTTO Chapter 20 159 A Way of Learning Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

The Getty Center. Photo by Scott Frances/OTTO 160 Chapter 20 Richard Meier

Name: Richard Meier, FAIA, FRIBA in Tel Aviv, Israel; a resort in South Korea; two residential towers in Tokyo, Japan; Phase 1 of a Master Plan for Firm: Richard Meier & Partners Architects, LLP, New York, downtown Newark, New Jersey; and residences in Bodrum, NY Turkey. Richard Meier received his architectural training at Cornell In 1997, Richard Meier received the AIA Gold Medal, the University and established his own office in New York in highest award from the American Institute of Architects, 1963. His practice has included major civic commissions in and, in the same year, the Praemium Imperiale from the the United States, Europe, and Asia, including courthouses Japanese government in recognition of lifetime achievement and city halls, museums, corporate headquarters, and housing in the arts. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British and private residences. Among his most well-known projects Architects and the American Institute of Architects, and are the Getty Center in Los Angeles; the Jubilee Church in he received a Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter Rome, Italy; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; of the AIA in 1980 and a Gold Medal from the Los Angeles Perry and Charles Street Condominiums in New York; the Chapter in 1998. His numerous awards include 30 National Canal+ Television Headquarters in Paris, France; and the AIA Honor Awards and over 50 regional AIA Design Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Spain. Awards. In 1989, Richard Meier received the Royal Gold In 1984, Mr. Meier was awarded the Pritzker Prize for Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects. In Architecture, considered the field’s highest honor. In the 1992, the French government honored him as a Commander same year, he was selected architect for the prestigious of Arts and Letters, and in 1995 he was elected Fellow to commission to design the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2011, which was opened to popular and critical acclaim in Richard Meier received the AIANY President’s Award and December 1997. Among the projects recently completed by the Sidney Strauss Award from the New York Society of Richard Meier & Partners are the Arp Museum in Germany; Architects. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the the OCT Shenzhen Clubhouse in China; the Broad Art Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the American Academy in Rome, Center at UCLA; the Italcementi i.lab in Italy; the United and the American Academy of Arts and Letters from which States Federal Courthouse in San Diego, California; and he received the Gold Medal for Architecture in 2008. He Weill Hall, the Life Sciences Technology Building at Cornell has received honorary degrees from the University of Naples,

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 University in Ithaca, New York. Projects currently under New Jersey Institute of Technology, The New School for construction include the Leblon Offices in Rio de Janeiro, Social Research, Pratt Institute, the University of Bucharest, Brazil; a hotel complex in Jesolo, Italy; a residential tower and North Carolina State University. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 21 Bill Pedersen: High Hopes Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 21 163 High Hopes Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Early sketch, Shanghai World Financial Center. William Pedersen 164 Chapter 21 Bill Pedersen

The architect responsible for some of the world’s best-known tall buildings says he’d rather be remembered for designing something smaller.

Like a chair.

As he talked by phone about art, architecture, and the nature of sketching, Bill Pedersen, principal design partner at New York’s Kohn Pedersen Fox, was simultaneously bending, shaping, and fine-tuning a diminutive wire model for his latest and greatest piece of furniture.

His interviewer had to drag out of him the fact that he’d designed the 101-storey Shanghai World Financial Center, that broad-shouldered, prism-shaped skyscraper that towers over the People’s Republic of China. Completed in 2008, it’s one of the nation’s tallest structures.

During the conversation, Pedersen also neglected to mention any of his other projects, like the Proctor & Gamble World Headquarters in Cincinnati, the Gannett/USA Today Headquarters in Virginia, or the duo of tall ABC buildings on William Pedersen, Principal, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) Manhattan’s West 60s. discussion takes place with a pencil, as well as words – it’s an No, a modest Pedersen wanted to talk about his aspirations indispensable tool of communication.” in chair design. “I’ve yet to reveal my talents for it,” he says, Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 tweaking his wire model, “but I have high hopes.” To him, In his early education, the St. Paul native attended a school chair design is simply another kind of language on another that focused primarily on Latin and math, with very little in kind of scale – like tableware, mixed-use residences, or the way of visual studies. But in architecture school at the academic buildings – in which every architect should be University of Minnesota, he spent a tremendous amount fluent. of time with sketch pad and pencil. He was inspired there, and later in graduate school at MIT, by the artistic abilities He likes to draw when he talks, too. In fact, he rarely carries of Eero and Eliel Saarinen, as well as by Hugh Ferriss, on a conversation or attends a meeting without his ever- Otto Wagner, and Ralph Rapson. “They were all brilliant present blue China Marker for on-the-scene sketching. Like draftsmen,” he says. “But Ralph Rapson could draw like a writer putting pen to paper to discover what he or she is nobody I’ve ever run into.” thinking, Pedersen draws to represent his thoughts – and to articulate conceptual comparisons. “I simply cannot The Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of talk without drawing at the same time,” he says. “Any Minnesota, Rapson’s penchant for drawing was downloaded Chapter 21 165 High Hopes

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Sketch, Shanghai World Financial Center. William Pedersen Sketch, Shanghai World Financial Center. William Pedersen

into the school’s DNA, and formed a large part of an education Sketching is a comfortable way for Pedersen to create there. “One simply had to learn to do it,” Pedersen says. too – not in a precise exercise, but rather as a gestural “The school is well known for its students’ drawing abilities.” one. Every project he works on (with the exception of his wire-modeled chair) starts out on a two-dimensional Like many in his profession, he looks to Le Corbusier as a piece of paper. “There’s no way to begin without mentor when it comes to the art of the sketch, admiring it – everything is initiated with a sketch. It becomes the master’s skill at drawing in an elementary fashion to immediately transformed into a more accurate form, illustrate conceptual representations of his thought process. especially in relation to proportion,” he says. “But “Those drawings have his personal character, and are the most drawings can also convey character – my sketches valuable historical documentation of architectural drawings,” convey form and concept.” he says. “He conveyed his sensibilities through lines on paper.” 166 Chapter 21 Bill Pedersen

Drawing is an extension of the architect’s mind, and the mind is an extension of his hand. Intuition lies within the thought, and the drawing represents that thought. “As you draw, new things come up and a variety of things transpire,” he says. “You get the idea from the sketch and then take it to some kind of three-dimensional form on the computer.”

And though he relies on his China Marker to communicate, he’s also a big fan of the computer, particularly for collaborative participation. It offers great value in the design phase, he believes, because a group can work together, manipulating whatever’s on the screen easily and quickly. That might be possible with drawings, he reasons, but a computer is much faster.

“The primary tools of an architect are drawings first, models second, and then computer realization of the first two,” he says. “In a sense, the computer has never replaced, but only augmented, drawing by hand. It’s another arrow in the architect’s quiver. And it’s one hell of a tool.”

He finds the advantages to the computer to be countless, and finds few disadvantages to the technology itself. Instead, the problem might lie with the user. For example, an individual needs to understand fully the implications of computers, and have sufficient knowledge Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 of the basic skills associated with drawing. “They’re the fundamentals that must be mastered before one can move on to computers,” he says.

And though computers, unlike hand drawing, don’t require emotional participation, they do play an important role in the problem-solving process. The architect may have a certain image in mind, and often, the only way to understand it fully is to sketch it out in a rudimentary fashion. A wide variety of sketches often ensues, each of which might then be tested with models and computer imagery. Drawings and computer tests continue Sketch, Shanghai World Financial Center. William Pedersen through the life of any of his projects, from beginning to end. Chapter 21 167 High Hopes

Watercolor painting, Shanghai World Financial Center. William Pedersen

“We go back and forth testing possibilities – it’s a very iterative and comparative process. A single building is the result of hundreds of concepts being tested,” Pedersen says. “This comparison of ideas allows the client to get involved, although drawing for a client is different from drawing for oneself.” Indeed, he divides the kinds of drawing he does into three categories: internal purposes, art, and presentation to the client. It is the latter that appeals to him most.

“I’ve gotten very positive responses, particularly in interviews,” he says. “The benefits of drawing for a client are two-fold: first, it conveys confidence, and second, it conveys an idea very quickly. I’ll draw with clients to create a dialog that’s not solo, but a collaborative participation. Not to mention that it makes me feel comfortable!” William Pedersen seated in chair of his design, with model of Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Shanghai World Financial Center. Photo by Kristine Larsen

The one major casualty in this 21st-century age of computer- aided design and drawing is the role of the delineator and spirit of buildings, but now there isn’t a renderer still in the the hand-rendered drawing. Sketch models are not likely business. They can’t compete with a computer.” to disappear any time soon, and cardboard models promise to stick around as well. Hand-sketches, with their ability For all his sketching during a long and fruitful international to communicate a thought almost instantly, aren’t going career, he cares little about his own drawings once they’ve anywhere either. served their purpose. He’s thrown away hundreds of them, he says. But the hand-rendered drawings, like those by early 20th-century master Hugh Ferriss, or either of the But that wire model for his latest foray into chair design? Saarinens? “It’s going by the wayside,” Pedersen says. “They were indispensable representations of the character and Odds are, it’s a keeper. He’s staking his reputation on it. 168 Chapter 21 Bill Pedersen

Name: William (Bill) Pedersen addition to numerous state and local AIA awards, he received recognition from the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Firm: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) Habitat (CTBUH) for the Shanghai World Financial Center Education: as the “Best Tall Building in the World” in 2009. In addition • Bachelor of Architecture, 1961, University of Minnesota to his architectural work, Bill Pedersen has designed a series College of Design of award-winning lighting fixtures for Ivalo and holds ten • Master of Architecture, 1963, Massachusetts Institute of design patents for furniture. Personal honors which he has Technology (Whitney Fellow) received include the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1965, • American Academy in Rome, 1965 (Rome Prize in the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Architecture) Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the University of Minnesota’s Alumni Achievement Award, the Major awards Gold Medal from the national architectural fraternity, Tau During his career with KPF, Bill Pedersen has received seven Sigma, the Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award National Design Awards for work he has directed. Among from the CTBUH, and the Medal of Honor from the AIA of them are a wide variety of building types: 333 Wacker New York. He was also recently elected as a member of the Drive in Chicago; the Procter & Gamble Headquarters in National Academy and was awarded the 2013 International Cincinnati; the DG Bank in Frankfurt, Germany; the World Award by The Society of American Registered Architects Bank in Washington, D.C.; the Gannett Headquarters in (SARA). McLean, Virginia; the Baruch College in Manhattan, New York; and One Jackson Square in Manhattan, New York. In Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 22 Suchi Reddy: As Natural as Breathing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 22 171 As Natural as Breathing

She got started with Indian landscapes at the age of 10, using her pencil as a representative tool. “In India, the drawing was much more technical,” she says. “It had a lot more to do with light and shade and shadow.”

Drawing was an intense part of the University of Detroit Mercy’s architecture curriculum, which included a sketch- heavy exchange program in Poland – and annual trips to Italy. But it was the culture of late 1980s Detroit – then a city caught up in a collision of new ideas influencing everything from hip-hop to design – that educated her about life and design in an urban setting.

“There’s so much architecture there, and so much to learn about what to do and what not to do,” she says. “It’s a great place to see what actually makes a city and a community become what it is, mostly by seeing what didn’t work.”

By the time she got to Polshek Partners (now Ennead Architects) in New York, she was inhaling the rarified air on the top floor of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, home to a vast collection of architectural drawings and prints. Among the works tucked away there are those by modern masters Le Suchi Reddy. Photo by Ball and Albanese Corbusier and Louis Kahn. Suchi Reddy was born and raised in Chennai, India, educated at the University of Detroit Mercy by instructors “You can see the differences in people’s styles, and their very from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and worked with Polshek close relationship to an ideology,” she says. “It’s an amazing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Partners on the redesign of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt place to see how drawing is indispensable as a means of National Design Museum in New York. thinking.”

She learned something about drawing at each of those She set up her own firm in New York in 2002, and never venues. looked back. With a number of architects and designers on staff, she’s designed spaces for Henri Bendel, Jimmy In fact, the 48-year-old Manhattan-based architect seems Choo, and even Lever House, Gordon Bunshaft’s Midtown always to be refining her appreciation for the art of the modernist icon. Their work has not gone unnoticed, with sketch – as she folds it into the essence of her being. favorable coverage in Architectural Digest, Dwell, New York, and The New York Times. “It’s impossible to imagine not doing it – it’s like breathing to people like us,” she says. “It wouldn’t be possible to see the But if a budding architect is interested in working at world without it – it would be like being mute.” Reddymade Design today, a pencil and a sketch pad will be 172 Chapter 22 Suchi Reddy Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Reddy Residence: A sketch of the southeast corner, showing how the screens provide privacy and delineation of space

de rigueur to fit into its culture. The ones who know how to means something – and we need to know that meaning,” she draw are the ones who work for her. says.

“I look for drawing before I hire – it tells me they understand Reddy’s work on paper has intensified over the years, albeit what they’re looking at,” she says. “Some of the people here in a reductive way. have such a beautiful hand – there’s one who does pencil sketches, and another who does detail sketches.” When she started out in New York, she’d draw renderings to augment her income – large-scale drawings developed for the They all draw to arrive at an understanding and architects where she worked, and for others on a freelance definition of their subject matter – for example, sketching basis. Today, her work is a little more minimal. “There used a window and thinking about its sill. “Everything to be more color, but now they’re black and white sketches to Chapter 22 173 As Natural as Breathing

Reddy Residence: A sketch of the east view toward the kitchen with the bed beyond, showing how the screen can be dropped to hide the bed from view Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 indicate with lines that it’s about form, not texture or light,” “We use a lot of computer modeling, because its strength is she says. to do things accurately, with proportion and the location of the sun, for example,” she says. “It may be three-dimensional, Her drawings represent an evolution in her thinking, but really, everything is generated by the hand-sketch and with ideas that become clearer and clearer with each its refinement of natural details – way before we use the sketch. They might also launch something new, computer.” off in a different direction, and that’s part of the point. Drawing by hand generates multiple concepts, The difference between the two media lies in the kind of shows them readily, and sometimes creates newer forms thinking a designer is using when engaged in either. “When altogether. you draw a line with your hand, you’re thinking about how long it is, and when you do it with a computer, it’s telling you Once they’ve been articulated, she’ll move on to computer how long it is,” she says. “And those are two very different software. things.” 174 Chapter 22 Suchi Reddy

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Reddy Residence: A sketch of the floor plan showing the space; the island functions as a separation of space with the living space in the front and the bed, kitchen, and bath areas in the rear

There’s another difference too. Drawings are about ideas, possible,” she says. “To me, it’s so important to organize my while images are meant to be consumed. “With drawing thoughts and then make the drawing beautiful.” you’re trying to understand why this line is different from that one,” she says. “It’s all about lines versus pixels – the strokes With clients in the office, there’s almost always a roll of trace of a drawing mean a perspective that’s spatial, rather than a on the conference table, aimed at creating a collaborative flat representation.” atmosphere. She doesn’t believe in drawing just for herself, but in working together to arrive at a solution. Clients will When she began to sketch out her own home, the results were bring in photographs or plans or simple doodles to show what eight slim lines on a sheet of paper – expressive, clean, and they’re thinking, and she’ll work with them from there. “To meaningful. “It’s like poetry, to express it in as few lines as me, it shows they’re really engaging with the process, really Chapter 22 175 As Natural as Breathing Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Reddy Residence: A sketch of the north wall, with a cloud light fixture above a custom table that can be raised to maximize space

invested in it, and investigating it – rather than just paying booklet to indicate where they started out and where they for it,” she says. ended up.

Reddy will come back to them with her own hand-drawn “It’s interesting to work that way,” she says. “And it’s fun.” interpretation to show what she’s thinking, next to what the client suggested. Eventually, she’ll assemble a small And, for her, as natural as breathing. 176 Chapter 22 Suchi Reddy

Reddy Residence: A sketch of the west elevation with the cloud light pendant and the table in the down position; a mirror on the wall reflects light into the space, making it feel bigger Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Reddy Residence: View of the apartment from the entry door, with the bed on the left, the kitchen in the middle and then the main living space on the right. Photo by David Friedman Chapter 22 177 As Natural as Breathing

Name: Suchi Reddy commercial interiors in architectural landmarks like Lever House. Currently, the studio is finishing a mid-rise mixed- Firm: Reddymade Design, New York use building in Reddy’s native city, the design of which will Although she hails from Chennai, India and still misses incorporate the work of emerging Indian sculptors. Always its tropical blossoms and soft sea breezes, Suchi Reddy is a imaginative, and often art-filled, these distinctive projects naturalized New Yorker. Inspired and energized by the city’s have garnered the studio numerous awards and features in converging cultures and creative dynamism, she has made it a host of prestigious publications, including the New York her base for Reddymade Design, the architecture and interior Times, Architectural Record, Interior Design, Dwell, New York design studio she founded in 2002. In the years since, the Magazine, AD India, Platform, and Vogue India. Two years studio has conceived residences ranging from the grand to the in a row, the studio’s work has been nominated for Interior micro, in city and country, and far-flung lands, for celebrity Design’s Best of Year award. MoMA/PS1 selected a short film clients and more discreet lovers of bespoke contemporary the studio made for a competition on climate change, and design. It has created retail boutique interiors for tastemaker another short film about Suchi Reddy’s own apartment has brands like Henri Bendel and Jimmy Choo, and high-end won an award at a documentary film festival. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 23 Witold Rybczynski: Connecting to the Past Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 23 181 Connecting to the Past Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

January 22, 1980: Preliminary sketches of plan alternatives, pencil, by Witold Rybczynski 182 Chapter 23 Witold Rybczynski

As the profession breaks away from drawing in favor of computer software, he reasons, it loses contact with a way of working – and learning – that’s been in use for more than a thousand years.

“It’s as if you invented a new language and couldn’t read Shakespeare anymore,” he says. “Digital representation is not just a faster way of working, but a different way – you start to look at buildings as three-dimensional models that you can rotate on a screen. There is no such thing as scale anymore.”

Witold Rybczynski. Photo by Michael Cooper At work a few years back on a book about Vizcaya, the early 20th-century Baroque Revival mansion in Miami, Rybczynski Drawing, says architect and writer Witold Rybczynski, stands and landscape architect Laurie Olin were reviewing the squarely at the center of architecture. project’s original garden drawings. At one point, Olin remarked that they’d be the last generation of designers able It’s a communication tool that helps designers understand to interpret the estate’s blueprints, which were marked up in their peers, their clients, their students, and even the work of red by the original designer. architects from centuries past. “Such drawings will become mysterious and not obvious,” Like Andrea Palladio. Rybczynski says. “Potentially, there’s an entire language lost.”

Researching a book on the Italian master, Rybczynski visited He learned to draw as a student at McGill University in the RIBA archive in London to examine his drawings, most Montreal in the mid-1960s. His first two-and-a-half years of them passed down from generation to generation over 500 there were concerned with engineering – mostly concrete, years. “I could see the thinking, even in the postage stamp- steel, and foundations – but in his third year, the curriculum Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 sized sketches of house plans,” he says. “It gave me a personal shifted to the use of exploratory tools like photography and connection to the past.” drawing.

With current declines in university-level drawing classes for “My first architecture assignment was to make a architects-to-be, Rybczynski is concerned with how much measured drawing of a building on the campus,” he says. students really stand to lose – and not just the skill itself, but “An architect starts a project by sketching something – the understanding of how and what their predecessors were but to actually build a building, you have to do the thinking. construction drawings. So drawing became the key tool that you had to learn.” “I’m not sure if a student in the future will be able to understand the older drawings,” he says. “They’d be like A teacher himself, for years Rybczynski has been able to look hieroglyphics – difficult to comprehend, and so different from at his students’ sketches and see how clearly they’re thinking digital renderings.” as architects. From there he can understand their talents and Chapter 23 183 Connecting to the Past

1967 to 1980, but then writing took more and more of my time.”

He’s been nothing if not prolific. In addition to 18 books, covering subjects such as Palladio, Vizcaya, and Frederick Law Olmsted, the 71-year-old has also written regularly about architecture for The Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Slate.

But his earlier sketches caught up with him recently, when he received a message from the new owners of a passive solar home he’d designed in 1980. He promptly pulled out his original drawings – and just as he had with Palladio, familiarized himself with the language of the building, sketched decades ago on 11 x 14-inch pages. March 2, 1980: 1/8” scale ruled plans, colored pencil, by Witold Rybczynski “These drawings were done in pencil and ink in a large sketchbook,” he says. “What I liked about these big skills by assessing how minds and hands connect through pages was the composition of shapes on the page. It was done drawing. But with computer-generated drawings it’s become for myself, to explore what I was doing.” difficult to make that assessment. The drawings were problem-solvers for a complex client “A hand drawing may be crude and ill formed, while a program. The home was to face south, with masonry computer drawing is always refined and sophisticated, floors and walls absorbing the sun’s heat, and needed to and looks so beautiful,” he says. “You no longer can accommodate a variety of functions, including sauna, powder distinguish the abilities of the person being interviewed.” room, study nook, bedrooms, and greenhouse. The site, too, was difficult.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 A good architect, he notes, is a better-than-average draftsman and understands that drawing is not simply an additional “It was a narrow lot with not many trees, and all the skill, but something that’s essential. “It used to be taken for neighboring houses faced the road,” he says. “In the granted that a certain level was to be achieved – Olin and Michael Graves make beautiful drawings,” he says. “And if an architect can’t draw well, he or she probably isn’t a good architect.”

Writing, too, offers its opportunities and rewards, as Rybczynski’s learned over time. After graduating from McGill in 1966, he launched his design practice, working for more than a decade until a second career began to take shape. “When I got to be successful with writing, I stopped March 11, 1980: Elevation study, pencil and felt-tip pen, by Witold doing design work,” he says. “I practiced architecture from Rybczynski 184 Chapter 23 Witold Rybczynski

April, 1980: Constructed perspective, view from south, pencil, by Witold Rybczynski

April, 1980: Constructed perspective, view from road, pencil, by Witold Rybczynski

beginning I had the house facing the road, but in order to orient the south side to the sun, I turned the plan so at least half the house faced due south.”

His initial sketches reveal a dogleg plan, with the front of the house oriented to the road, and the rear oriented to the sun. Drawing freehand and to scale, he explored the idea of a parallelogram, then returned to the dogleg concept. The next drawing is an elevation, its landscaping touched up with a felt-tipped pen. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Finished house: Winter 2008. Photo by Claude Maheux-Picard “For me, drawings are always means to an end. Not works of art to be framed, but tools to explore the design from different points of view,” he says. Could Rybczynski’s drawings be called as sophisticated as those by Olin, Graves, or Palladio? Probably not. But they are In all, Rybczynski estimates that he executed 20 to 30 effective tools for exploration. drawings in his sketchbook for that single project, plus perspectives and finished plans to show the client how the “Louis Kahn’s charcoal drawings are wonderful because home might work and be used. There was feedback, then they’re so smudgy – there’s an idea in there but nobody alterations. “It was a learning experience for the client,” he can see it except him,” Rybczynski says. “There’s something says. “At that point it was also a dialog – I was sharing how half-baked in his mind, so he’s laying out these vague notions, the design was evolving.” and that’s the quality that makes his sketches so attractive.” Chapter 23 185 Connecting to the Past

It’s taken the architecture profession many centuries to refine Which is why, when asked about an addition to his 1980-era how to translate space onto paper, and Rybczynski is not in passive solar house, the first thing Rybczynski did was make a favor of giving that up easily, or quickly. few sketches to explore his options.

“To lose hand drawing in one generation would be tragic,” he Then he sent them off to his potential new client – and asked says. “It’s very arrogant to think that we can dispense with it for comments. and start all over again with something new.” Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 186 Chapter 23 Witold Rybczynski

Name: Witold Rybczynski, Hon. FAIA, Hon. ASLA 1997: Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award 2000: J. Anthony Lukas Prize Education: 2001: Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award • B. Arch (McGill), 1966 2007: • Seaside Prize • M. Arch (McGill), 1972 • American Society of Landscape Architects, • Doctor of Science, Hon. (McGill), 2002 Honorary Member • Doctor of Laws, Hon. (Western Ontario), 2006 • Vincent Scully Prize Awards: • Institute Honors for Collaborative Achievement, 1988, 1989: QSPELL Literary Prize for non-fiction AIA 1991: PA Award 2011: President’s Award, AIA Pennsylvania Chapter 1993: Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 24 Laurinda Spear: A Collaborative Spirit Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 24 189 A Collaborative Spirit

Laurinda Spear, FAIA, ASLA, RLA, LEED AP. Photo by Nick Garcia Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL: early watercolor, prior to construction. Image courtesy of Arquitectonica

There’s no dichotomy between drawing by hand and using a computer, says Laurinda Spear. She’d like to see them all around a single table, but finds the architects there resisting the idea. She’s an architect “They’re not opposed to each other,” she says. “They’re herself – she earned her graduate degree at Columbia after synergistic.” studying fine arts at Brown, then another graduate degree in landscape architecture from Florida International University. That goes for nearly everything at Arquitectonica, the So she can appreciate their perspective. Miami-based architecture firm she co-founded with Bernardo Fort-Brescia in 1977. Over time, Spear’s been responsible for “They all think they’re Howard Roark – they like to hand adding interior design, product design, and landscape design something off and tell everyone else what to do,” she laughs. to the firm’s mix of services. “Then the landscape designers will say: ‘What? Where’s Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 north? You want us to design the landscape from that?’” Once, all the firm’s disciplines operated separately from one another. But today, the office is permeated with a So she’s a big proponent of mixing up the disciplines – and collaborative spirit that’s contagious. It’s based on a single the media. concept: “There’s not one answer,” she says. “You need a lot of broad answers.” “We actually have a computer or two to sketch on here,” she says. “It turns hand drawing into digital drawing, any way you Spear’s a catalyst and proponent for change at the want – you can draw on a tablet or a flat vertical screen, and firm, constantly striving to break down silos and create you can freehand on it with a variety of colors and weights of opportunities where architects, interior designers, landscape lines.” architects, product designers, and even graphic artists can find common ground. “We’re working together at the same Still, she leans toward her Black Warrior Mirado pencils, and time but not always in the same place,” she says. finds her Moleskine notebooks convenient for sketching. 190 Chapter 24 Laurinda Spear

Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL: early watercolor, prior to construction. Image courtesy of Arquitectonica

But she’s also careful to tell the students and interns in the “Our larger scale projects now have a better chance of being office that since the iPhone and other technologies might client-driven,” she says. “The intent of our office is to be Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 be effective too, any way to keep a record will work. It’s all a amazingly collaborative – not only here, but with the client necessary means of annotating research, after all. and anyone else who needs to be involved – because it’s better for the project.” “Drawing by hand is good,” she says. “But I respect those who draw in other ways.” She encourages a cross-fertilization of techniques and resources – looking for drawings from anyone, and for collages When Arquitectonica started out – first with its uber-chic that combine photography, sketches, computer images, even Pink House in the late 1970s, and then with its now- satellite shots from Google Earth. She believes the larger the iconic Atlantis Condominiums, nearly all of its projects project, the richer it becomes, because it can refer back to so were developed by hand, including working drawings. many sources. Now, though, advances in technology and the sheer size of their projects demand the use of advanced computational “I find the large-scale projects liberating because they’re so techniques. It benefits both the client and the end-product. interesting,” she says. Chapter 24 191 A Collaborative Spirit

NORTHWEST ELEVATION

Northwest elevation, Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL. Image courtesy of Arquitectonica

SOUTHEAST ELEVATON ELEVATIONS

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Southeast elevation, Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL. Image courtesy of Arquitectonica

But the larger they get, the more they demand an easy- important as drawing – that if you can’t write to get them Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 to-understand narrative arc. Spear’s increasingly finding engaged, you won’t make it to their short list. What I hear is that visuals alone aren’t capable of telling a project’s entire that it’s all in the telling, and not in the visual.” story, particularly in response to requests for proposals for major government projects. An architect who wants to There’s no shortage of good writers at Arquitectonica – build an embassy in Beirut, she says, must persuade officials among them Spear herself, a self-described prose poet. But she at the State Department with more than a mere collage of wanted someone dedicated full-time to word-smithing at the images. firm. So, in 2013, she placed a classified ad in the Miami Herald:

The written word, it turns out, really matters. And so she’s Architecture and Landscape Architecture Writer added it to Arquitectonica’s mix. Our firm very much needs a great, insightful writer to work on: proposals, editorials, firm brochures, books, articles, children’s “It’s amazing what intense readers the federal government books, and miscellaneous writing! Required: a sense of humor, turns out to be,” she says. “I believe that writing is as great good spirit, love of life, desire to live in Miami. 192 Chapter 24 Laurinda Spear

SOUTHWEST ELEVATION

Southwest elevation, Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL. Image courtesy of Arquitectonica

NORTHEAST ELEVATION

Northeast elevation, Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL. Image courtesy of Arquitectonica

The response? “We got a gazillion replies,” she says. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Her requirements for applicants included the ability to articulate their ideas visually – so that they’d be as adept at drawing as they were at writing. Not surprisingly, the successful job-seeker was a registered landscape architect, recently relocated to South Florida from the northeast. She can write, draw, and speak the language of the firm.

And, more than likely, she arrived with a huge and finely tuned spirit of collaboration.

Photograph of concept model, Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL. Image courtesy of Arquitectonica Chapter 24 193 A Collaborative Spirit

Finished project, Miami Children’s Museum, Miami, FL. Photo by Scott B. Smith Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 194 Chapter 24 Laurinda Spear

Name: Laurinda Hope Spear, FAIA, ASLA, RLA, LEED AP 2000: Salvadori Center Founder’s Award 2002: National Academician (NA), National Academy of Firm: Design • Arquitectonica, Miami, FL 2007: Ultimate CEO, South Florida Business Journal • ArquitectonicaGEO, Miami, FL • ArquitectonicaINTERIORS, Miami, FL Teaching experience: • Visiting Professor University of Miami, 1975–1977, Education: 1993–1994, 2003 • Brown University, BA Fine Arts, 1972 • Visiting Professor Harvard University, 1994 • Columbia University, Master of Architecture, 1975 • Practicum Associate Professor University of Hawaii at • Florida International University, Master of Landscape Manoa, 2004 to present Architecture, Florida International, 2006 • Studio Professor, Florida International University, Spring • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Masters in City 2005 Planning candidate Community service/volunteer boards Architecture registration: • Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, Board • Registered Architect in Florida, New York, New Jersey, of Directors and Massachusetts • Licensed Foster and Medical Foster Parent, Miami-Dade • Registered Landscape Architect in Florida County • National Council of Architectural Registration Boards • National Tropical Botanical Garden, Council of Fellows (NCARB) Certification Member • Council of Landscape Architecture Registration Boards • Florida International University, Architectural Advisory (CLARB) Board • US General Services Administration (GSA) Design Professional affiliations: Excellence Peer Review Member, Washington, D.C. • LEED Accredited Professional • The Corporation of Brown University, Board of Trustees • American Institute of Architects, College of Fellows Emeritus (FAIA) • Ransom Everglades School, Benefactor Society Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 • American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) • Ransom Everglades School, Former Board of Trustee • International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Member and Buildings and Grounds Committee Member • American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) • Junior League, Associate Member, Miami, FL • American Society of Architectural Illustrators (ASAI) • Young Patronesses of the Opera, Associate Member, Distinctions: Miami, FL 1978: Rome Prize in Architecture • Women in Architecture Slide Library, Donor for 1992: Fellow, American Institute of Architects Randolph Center, VT 1998: Media Star, International Interior Design Association • Florida A&M University Industry Cluster (IIDA) • Advancing Women in Leadership, Advisory Editorial 1998: AIA Miami Silver Medal Award for Design Board Excellence • Lowe Art Museum, Sustaining Member of Beaux Arts 1999: Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame Support Group Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 25 Stanley Tigerman: A Language Other than Architecture Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 25 197 A Language Other than Architecture

five hours a day, wrote five hours a day, and practiced architecture five hours a day.”

Iconoclastic and fearless, Tigerman’s not known for tilting at windmills. He takes thoughtful, incisive aim, and more often than not he’s on target – with a provocateur’s delight and a polemicist’s demand for debate.

He learned some of that as a kindergartner, living in an all- too-real, grown-up world in Chicago. In the late 1930s, he’d lie on the floor at home with his three best friends, drawing graphic scenes from the raging blitzkrieg in Europe. There were mostly battle scenarios, littered with tanks, trains, guns, knives, and soldiers.

They were aided and inspired by a dramatic aural wallpaper. “Thanks to the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, we were listening to a preacher who played unedited speeches by Hitler – who, of course, was using his voice as a weapon,” he says. “That’s when I started drawing.”

Of the four, all stretched out and sketching in pre-World War Stanley Tigerman. Courtesy of Stanley Tigerman II America, one would earn his doctorate from Columbia, and two others would find theirs at Harvard. Tigerman studied If ever there were a kaleidoscopic career in architecture, it at MIT (where he’ll admit to flunking out), at the Chicago would be Stanley Tigerman’s. Institute of Design, and at the Yale University School of Architecture. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 He’s an outspoken designer who makes things, teaches students, lectures widely, writes lucidly, and draws prolifically. After Yale, he returned to Chicago and an architectural ethos jam-packed with large firms aligned with Miesian modernism, “I’m a person of old age who might do, instead of one thing, and doing well by it. It was the perfect atmosphere for a many things simultaneously,” the 83-year-old architect says. young, ambitious enfant terrible seeking to make himself known. He approaches every project as a tabula rasa – a blank slate. “It’s not like Richard Meier, dipping every building in white,” “We wanted a place at the table in the early 1970s,” he says. he quips. “Four of us got together and did a book, Chicago Architecture, plus an exhibit.” At the Chicago office he shares with his wife, Margaret McCurry, he dedicates his time to drawing, writing, and They soon expanded the group by three more and became designing. “Le Corbusier said it best,” he says. “He painted known as the Chicago Seven. They were postmodern and 198 Chapter 25 Stanley Tigerman

Holocaust Museum sketches. © Stanley Tigerman, c. 2000–2007

persistent, and they weren’t alone. “Harry Weese was trying desire to provoke the status quo and elbow their way into the to make a place for himself, too,” he says. “We were bad boys architecture of the city of the big shoulders. interested in revisionist history. We made a big stink with these exhibitions, to battle it out in public.” “It was done as part of being a propagandist and a polemicist, where inertia had set in and the Miesian ideas were being Unlike the Whites and the Grays back east, there was little used virtually entirely for commercial benefit,” he says. philosophical glue to hold them all together, just a common Thus his now-iconic collage of the Illinois Institute of Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Technology’s Mies-designed Crown Hall, out at sea, tilted up at a 45-degree angle – and like the Titanic, slipping sharply beneath the waves. “Something had to be destroyed,” he says. “Normally it would have been our parents. But we had to destroy our father.”

It’s a theme he’s repeated since he’s grown older. Asked to pass the symbolic baton at a symposium not too long ago, he arrived well equipped. “I had several batons,” he says. “I had a conductor’s baton and a racer’s baton. But the baton I talked about most was more indelible: it was a hunting knife. ‘Your job is to kill me and make a place for yourself,’” Holocaust Museum sketches. © Stanley Tigerman, c. 2000–2007 I said. Chapter 25 199 A Language Other than Architecture Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Photo collage, “The Titanic.” © Stanley Tigerman, 1978

No one’s yet dared take up the challenge. he says. “We’ll talk to people on request, but we’re not out seeking work.” Tigerman’s days of proto-branding the Chicago Seven was one of the last times he’d engage in that process. It’s an attitude based on a broader belief in the ethics of Today, he eschews the idea of marketing for architects human relationships. “At the end of the day, ethics is what’s entirely, having built up a small practice with eight people, ultimately important. How do you treat your clients, your its foundation based on clients caring about their work parents, and your friends? Do you respect them?” he asks. enough to look them up. “Those who want me, I want,” “Your behavior in words and actions is crucial.” 200 Chapter 25 Stanley Tigerman

Holocaust Museum sketches. © Stanley Tigerman, c. 2000–2007

It’s a philosophy of behavior that extends even to putting pencil to paper. While computers, as he sees them, are little more than the slide-rule of the 1950s, a drawing is a work of art and a means of establishing boundaries for how concepts, too, can behave.

“You test your buildings by erecting them, and in drawing, you’re testing ideas in a language other than architecture,” he says. “You see where it leads you.”

For him, drawing has led to a life of designing symbolic buildings that make huge statements to the nation and the Holocaust Museum sketches. © Stanley Tigerman, c. 2000–2007 world. One is his 2009 Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, IL, a Chicago suburb that’s home to a number of Holocaust survivors and also where, in 1977, a Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 group of neo-Nazis threatened to hold a parade. In a highly publicized ruling, the US Supreme Court upheld their right to free speech. And though the parade was moved eventually to Chicago, Skokie remains a city synonymous with neo- Nazis.

Other architects competing for the Holocaust Museum commission made PowerPoint presentations and offered computer-generated documents. But Tigerman relied on a simple sketch drawn on a paper napkin. It depicted a pair of volumes split like a mass of stone, broken in two by an uninhabitable void representing those who died in Europe’s concentration camps. Holocaust Museum sketches. © Stanley Tigerman, c. 2000–2007 Chapter 25 201 A Language Other than Architecture

Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. © David Seide, Defined Space, 2009

“I wanted to break something apart in the way that But the seeds of that museum design had been planted Hitler intended, and show what was on their minds in the decades before in the late 1930s, when as a young boy he Third Reich,” he says. “Rupture it, and it puts your money learned to draw on the floor of his living-room, listening via where your mouth is. I cut it in two to see what was inside.” radio to the ravings of a madman.

The project consumed nearly ten years of the architect’s life, Somehow, over a lifetime, Stanley Tigerman tamed it all and a powerful construct inspired in part by his Jewish upbringing. turned it into genius. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 202 Chapter 25 Stanley Tigerman

Name: Stanley Tigerman 2001: Honoree Laureate, Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, Skokie, IL Firm: Tigerman McCurry Architects, Chicago, IL 2002: Chicagoan of the Year, Chicago Magazine Education: 2008: Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural • Yale University, School of Architecture Education • Bachelor of Architecture, 1960 2008: American Institute of Architects/Association of • Master of Architecture, 1961 Collegiate Schools of Architecture 2008: Gold Medal for Outstanding Lifetime Service, Major awards: American Institute of Architects, Chicago, IL 1996: Cultural Achievement Award, American Jewish 2012: Lifetime Achievement Award, the Art Institute of Committee, Chicago, IL Chicago, IL 2000: Louis Sullivan Award, International Masonry 2013: Lifetime Achievement Award, American Institute of Institute, Washington, D.C. Architects, Chicago, IL Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 26 Tod Williams and Billie Tsien: Steps Along the Way Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Chapter 26 205 Steps Along the Way

that’s usually exquisite in its detailing, its use of materials, and its experiential qualities.

“I draw because it helps me think,” Williams says. “I do it not for pleasure, but to understand.”

“Drawing helps you to see and remember,” says his partner Tsien. “Architecture is a way of drawing your way toward something else.”

Today they’re joined by a staff of 25, in a studio that’s well known for its transcendent designs for the Barnes Foundation TWBT portrait, 2011. Photo by Jason Fulford in Philadelphia and the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan. Tod Williams and Billie Tsien have been working and drawing, hand-in-glove, since they established their New Williams and Tsien collaborated with noted landscape York studio in 1986. architect Laurie Olin on the Barnes landscape, and since the museum opened in 2012, critics have hailed the building, its They think about their sketches as means to an end – as a site plan, and the design of its surroundings. Each began with series of thoughtful steps along the way to a finished building simple strokes of pencil on paper. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Barnes Foundation: concept sketch, 2008, BT 206 Chapter 26 Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

“The landscape was worked out with Laurie, who also does beauty of the sketch or selling something to a client – it’s a lot of hand drawing, as we were walking around the site,” an act of working through personal ideas so that others can Williams says. understand them.

As they walked, they drew to discover the possibilities hidden “I make those marks, and then they’re criticized in the studio in the landscape. “You can take a million images on a cell here, where everyone can draw,” he says. “They’re notes to phone, but it isn’t telling you to see,” says Tsien. “And it’s not myself, with two or three alternatives – and they’re only imprinted on your brain, telling you to remember.” useful when I explain them.”

Williams lays down his marks on paper to register his own A sketch, says Tsien, is always in service to something else. thoughts, and from there to create a form. It’s not about the Sometimes that means drawing in the presence of their Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

Barnes Foundation: plan sketch, April 2008, TW Chapter 26 207 Steps Along the Way

clients, but not often. “We’ll show a sketch of an idea, so they After consulting with Tsien, Williams will hand off his initial can see we’re pursuing something, and so they’ll help us on ideas to a project architect in the studio to have it entered our journey,” she says. into CAD or Revit. Usually that happens after he’s drawn a freehand section and added language to clarify his intent. “We don’t want to be too self-aware,” Williams says. “In front of the client, the energy is too high – it’s slashing, and too “Sometimes a few words help us focus and converse,” he says. violent. We show clients tons of plans, sections, renderings, “And sometimes people read better than they understand and perspectives – but they’re always in process.” drawings. Writing can be a much more powerful tool.”

Rather than thinking of architecture as producing something “Looking at something is subjective,” says Tsien. “Writing is tangible – like writing a poem – the two designers consider less so. We’re always talking about the spirit of a project, so the process as more like working through a recipe. And they it’s important that we do a portion of the writing.” view all the people who collaborate with them as crucial participants in a project’s success. Architecture is not made Once the computer drawing comes back to him, Williams, by a single person, they contend, but through a dialog among with Tsien’s input, begins color-coding its properties – blue contractors, clients, and designers. for water, for example, or green for landscape. They also employ an abundance of Whiteout for mistakes or new ideas. “We don’t have all the answers,” Williams says. “We do know the path to what’s right, but we need them all to make it “Tod draws on top of what comes out of the computer, with perfect.” notes to himself at the intersections of space,” Tsien says. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

The Barnes Foundation: sketch section of building, September 2008 208 Chapter 26 Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

The Barnes Foundation: sketch perspective of the Light Court, July 2009

“If you look at the page, it’s a series of notations on top of nation, most recently at Yale. They don’t require that their something printed out that once was clean and finished, and students draw by hand, but they do insist on a thoughtful that’s now become much more aged.” approach to design. To emphasize that, they start every class Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 with an exercise that has nothing to do with architecture, but They’ll move next to a model made from foam core, seeking everything to do with hands. to formalize the original idea, then work through plan and section. All the while, they’re thinking through the concept “My feeling is that the digital world and the world of hands and the experience of the building, rather than the form or clasping each other are all about the tools,” Tsien says. what it should look like. “Both are digital – keyboard and digits. I see them as ways of thinking, and I think they’re connected to each other.” “The idea comes from the interior,” Williams says. “We live our lives from the interior – the exterior is less and less “I’d simply say that the human is the starting point and the important as we get older.” ending point – but that may change,” says Williams.

Over the years, the pair have shared their design philosophy But that’s unlikely anytime soon at Tod Williams Billie Tsien with students in a number of studios they teach around the Architects. Chapter 26 209 Steps Along the Way

The Barnes Foundation: sketch section of Collection Gallery, July 2009 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

The Barnes Foundation: sketch of entry mosaic pattern, April 2010 210 Chapter 26 Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

Names: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

Firm: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, New York

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien founded Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in 1986. Their studio, located in New York City, focuses on work for institutions – museums, schools, and non-profits; organizations that value issues of aspiration and meaning, timelessness and beauty. Their buildings are carefully made and useful in ways that speak to both efficiency and the spirit. A sense of rootedness, light, texture, detail, and most of all experience is at the heart of what they build. Their compelling body of work includes the Natatorium at the Cranbrook School, the American Folk Art Museum in New York, the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, the Asia Society Center in Hong Kong, the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the new LeFrak Center in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The firm, with Davis Brody Bond, was awarded the commission to design the New Embassy Compound in Mexico City. Parallel to their practice, Williams and Tsien maintain active teaching careers and lecture worldwide. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016

View of the Light Court, looking west, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. © 2012 The Barnes Foundation Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Acknowledgements Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 213 Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the ready assistance Architects, Lea Richard-Nagle and Amanda de Beaufort and simple acts of kindness from a number of individuals at Studio Daniel Libeskind, Cindy Bokser and Anne Edgar as this book was being written and pulled together. They of Anne Edgar Associates, Lindsay Ann Cory at MacKay- include Ann Rudy, Sherrie and Joe Parker, Alberto Alfonso Lyons Sweetapple Architects, Edgar Almaguer at Richard of Alfonso Architects, JoAnn Locktov of Bella Figura Meier & Partners Architects, Marisa McCabe at Kohn Communications, Shari Cleland at Aidlin Darling Design, Pedersen Fox, David Cook at Reddymade Design, Natalia Katherine Dyke at Deborah Berke Partners, Tim Popa and Raina at Arquitectonica, Taber Wayne at Tigerman McCurry David LePage at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architecture, Architects, and Octavia Giovannini-Torelli at Tod Williams Colleen Redfield at Cutler Anderson Architects, Mary Kate Billie Tsien Architects. Special thanks go also to my agent, Murray at Michael Graves & Associates, Irene Stillman Rita Rosenkranz, and to Wendy Fuller, Jennifer Birtill, and in Léon Krier’s office, Matt Anderson at Olson Kundig Grace Harrison at Taylor and Francis. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Index Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 217 Index

All figures are shown by a page reference in italics.

a 29, 30, 30, 31; students and drawing skills 29; thinking AIA North Carolina Center for Architecture and Design: drawings 28 competition drawing of northeast corner 100; early sketch Bohlin, Peter: Apple Stores 36; Apple’s Cube and Plaza 35, of northeast corner 101; photo of northeast corner 103; 36; computer/drawing relationship 37; curriculum vitae 40; south elevation 102; study of construction materials 102; design process 37; early drawing experiences 36, 37–8; Forest study of north elevation 101; study of south elevation 101 House 38, 39, 39; personal importance of drawing 38–9; Aidlin, Joshua: curriculum vitae 8; early drawing experiences thinking drawings 37; Visitor Center, Grand Teton National 3, 3 Park 36–7; Waipolu Gallery and Studio, Hawaii 37 Aidlin Darling Design: drawing and collaborative process Byrd, Warren: Campbell Hall, University of Virginia 44, 45, 3–4; massing studies, McEvoy Ranch Winery 6; Sonoma 46, 47, 48; computer/drawing relationship 45–6; design Vineyard Estate 4–6, 5, 7; Windhover Contemplative process 45; drawing and collaborative process 44–5; early Center, Stanford 4, 6 drawing experiences 43; students and drawing skills 43–4; Alfonso, Alberto: computer/drawing relationship 13; University of Virginia 43 curriculum vitae 15; design process 13–14; drawing and ownership 12–13; early drawing experiences 12; Streamsong Resort 11, 13, 14 c Alfonso, Carlos 12 Campbell Hall, University of Virginia (Warren Byrd): analytical design xii completed bioretention gardens 48; early perspective 44; Apple’s Cube and Plaza (Peter Bohlin) 35, 36, 36 early sketch, South Addition 46; perspective through alley to upper terrace 45; preliminary sketch of bioretention garden 46; sketches of bioretention garden 47 b Cassilhaus (Ellen Cassilly): basic concept drawing 52; bridge Balazs, Harold 131 54; design process 51–2; gallery concepts 52, 53; looking Barnes Foundation (Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects) south 55; master bath 53; in relation to creek 52 Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 205–6; museum in a garden/garden in a museum 205; Cassilly, Ellen: career 51; Cassilhaus 51–2, 52, 53, 54, 55; plan sketch 206; sketch of entry mosaic pattern 209; computer/drawing relationship 54; curriculum vitae 56; sketch perspective of the Light Court 208; sketch section, design process 53–4; drawing and discussion 52–3 Collection Gallery 209; sketch section of building 207; Chasen residence (in situ studio): diagram push/pull 117; view of the light court 210 exterior view 118; long section 117; sections 118; site plan Berke, Deborah: curriculum vitae 24; design process 20–1; 115 drawing and creative process 22; early drawing experiences Chicken Point Cabin (Tom Kundig) 133–4; concept 21; intense carbon pigment stick 19, 20; Lászlo Bitó ‘60 diagram 134; concept sketches 133; diagrammatic sketch music conservatory, Bard College 20, 21, 22, 23 for pivoting window wall 132; exterior view 135; section Bishir, Catherine 103 drawing 134; view from primary living space 135 Blackwell, Marlon: curriculum vitae 32; Saint Nicholas Connecticut Corporate Headquarters (James Cutler): Eastern Orthodox Church, Arkansas 28; Steven L. external amphitheatre 63; lobby 63; looking south from the Anderson Design Center, University of Arkansas 27, lobby 59; public entry 62; view from auditorium 61 218 Index

Cutler, James: Connecticut Corporate Headquarters 59, 61, Giotto di Bondone 140 62, 63; curriculum vitae 64; design process 60, 61; drawing Graf, Otto Antonia xiii and working memory 61–2; ITO-YA pencil 60–1, 60; Graves, Michael: curriculum vitae 95; Denver Central students and drawing skills 61–3; thinking drawings 61–2 Library 94; drawing and collaborative process 93; drawing Cywinski, Bernard 39 as tool of investigation 93–4; early drawing experiences 91–2; freehand drawing evolution, imaginary landscape 92–3; function of drawing 91; Rybczynski, Witold’s praise d for 183, 184 Darling, David: curriculum vitae 8; early drawing experiences Griffith, Matthew: computer/drawing relationship 117; 3, 3; paper/sketch/model approach 4–5; see also Aidlin curriculum vitae 119; early drawing experiences 116; see Darling Design also in situ studio Denver Central Library (Michael Graves) 94

Everhart, Chad: computer/drawing relationship 70; design h process 68–70; mountain re-shack 68, 69, 70, 71; the Salt Harmon, Frank: AIA North Carolina Center for House 68; site evaluations 69–70; sketches and fieldwork, Architecture and Design 100, 101, 102, 103; computer/ agricultural estates 67–8 drawing relationship 100–1; curriculum vitae 104; design process 101–2; drawing and working memory 100, 101; early drawing experiences 99–100; Poplar Forest drawings e 99; sketchbooks 102–3 Formwork: drawing and collaborative process 76–8; log cabin Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Illinois renovation 77, 78, 79; rough sketches, dining table 77 (Stanley Tigerman) 200–1; finished project 201; sketches freehand drawing: analysis and composition xiii; as designing 198, 200 or imagining xii–xiii; as documentation xi; role within Höweler, Eric: curriculum vitae 111–12; early drawing architecture xii–xiii; types of xi experiences 107 Freelon, Allan Randall Snr 84 Höweler + Yoon Architecture: Audi Urban Future Initiative Freelon, Phil: curriculum vitae 88; drawing as language Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 109–10; design process, computer renderings 107–8; of architecture 86–7; early drawing experiences 84–5; Shareway 107, 108, 109–10, 109, 110, 111; students and Freelon table 87; The Gantt Center 86; Raleigh Durham drawing 108–9 International Airport concept 83, 84; Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture 85–6, 85; students and drawing skills 87; teaching work 87 i in situ studio: Chasen residence 115, 117, 118; design process 116–18 g the Getty Center (Richard Meier) 156; photos 158, 159; sketches 155, 157 j Ghost Laboratory (Brian MacKay-Lyons) 148, 149–50, 149, Jefferson, Thomas 43, 99, 102 150, 151, 152 Johnson, Phillip 102 219 Index

k m Kahn, Louis 13, 38, 184 MacKay-Lyons, Brian: on Blackwell’s Steven L. Anderson Kosmerick, Todd 103 Design Center design 30; client communication 147; Krier, Léon: computer/drawing relationship 125; curriculum curriculum vitae 152; design process 147; early 147; Ghost vitae 128; drawing and communication 126–7; early Laboratory 148, 149–50, 149, 150, 151, 152 drawing experiences 123–5; Farmhouse near Chambery, McCarter, Robert: Scarpa sketch 1 xi; Scarpa sketch 2 xii; France 125; Gasworks in Frankfurt am Main 125; Mirage Scarpa sketch 3 xiii V drawing 124; Program for Jeunesse Musicale Concerts, McEvoy Ranch Winery 6 Luxembourg 124; Project for Air Terminal Luxembourg Meier, Richard: curriculum vitae 160; design process 156–7; 124; Resort in Paralimni 123; Seaside, Florida 125; Seaside drawing archives 156, 157; early drawing experiences 156; Belevedere Tower, Opus 36 126; sketch for Derby Town the Getty Center 155, 156, 157, 158, 159 Center Competition 126 Miami Children’s’ Museum (Laurinda Spear): early Kundig, Tom: Chicken Point Cabin 132, 133–4, 133, watercolor 189, 190; finished project193 ; northeast 134, 135; client communication 133; computer/drawing elevation 192; northwest elevation 191; photograph of relationship 132; curriculum vitae 136; design process 128; concept model 192; southeast elevation 191; southwest drawing and working memory 131, 132–3; early drawing elevation 192 experiences 131; thinking drawings 134 Michelangelo 143 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 141 mountain re-shack (Chad Everhart): before and after photos l 68; conceptual designs 01-03 70; landscape design sketch Lászlo Bitó ‘60 music conservatory, Bard College 69; rendering 71; site analysis 69 (Deborah Berke): cladding study 22; conceptual sketch 21; early elevation study sketch 21; exterior view 22 n Le Corbusier xi–xii, 13, 100, 125, 157, 165, 197 Nichols, Robert: curriculum vitae 80; drawing and Lennon, John 12 collaborative process 76–8; see also Formwork

Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Leonardo da Vinci 3, 12 Nicols, Cecilia Hernandez: curriculum vitae 80; drawing and Lewis, Erin Sterling: computer/drawing relationship 117; collaborative process 76–8; see also Formwork curriculum vitae 119; early drawing experiences 116; see North Carolina State University Special Collections also in situ studio Research Center 103 Libeskind, Daniel: computer/drawing relationship 141; curriculum vitae 144; design process 142; early drawing experiences 140; Jewish Museum, Berlin 141; World o Trade Center reconstruction 139, 141, 142, 143, 143, Olin, Laurie 182, 183, 184, 205 144 log cabin renovation (Formwork): early plan study 77; proportional study 79; study of program distribution and p building volumes 79; study of proportions and textural Palladio, Andrea 182 options 78; study of site cross-elevation 78; turkey bridge Pedersen, Bill: chair designs 164, 167; computer/drawing 79 relationship 166–7; curriculum vitae 168; design process 220 Index

165–6, 167; early drawing experiences 164; Shanghai 194; drawing and collaborative process 189; Miami World Financial Center 163, 164, 165, 166, 167; thinking Children’s’ Museum 189, 190, 191, 192, 193; writing and drawings 164 architecture 191–2 Steven L. Anderson Design Center, University of Arkansas (Marlon Blackwell): axonometric section study 30; r conceptual sketch 27; design process 30; graphite pencil Raleigh Durham International Airport concept (Phil axon 30; pen plan perspective 30; pen sketch over Freelon) 83, 84 computer line drawing 29; perspective sketches 29; Reddy, Suchi: client communication 174–5; computer/ renderings of massing iterations 31; southwest corner of drawing relationship 173–4; curriculum vitae 177; drawing, elevation 31 role in architecture 171–2; early drawing experiences 171; Streamsong Resort (Alberto Alfonso): concept watercolor 11; Reddy residence 172, 173, 174, 174, 175, 176; thinking drawings 13; finished exterior 14; watercolors 14 drawings 173 Rybczynski, Witold: architectural writings 183; computer/ drawing relationship 182, 183; curriculum vitae 186; t drawing, role in architecture 183, 185; early drawing Tigerman, Stanley: and the Chicago Seven 197–9; computer/ experiences 182; passive solar house 181, 183–4, 183, 184; drawing relationship 200; early drawing experiences 197; students and drawing skills 182; thinking drawings 183 ethics of human relationships 199–200; Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Illinois 198, 200–1, 200, 201; ‘The Titanic’ 198, 199 s Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects: the Barnes Foundation Saint Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church, Arkansas (Marlon 205–6, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210; students and drawing Blackwell) 28 skills 208 Scarpa, Carlo: on drawing xi, xii; as inspiration for Tom Tsien, Billie: client communication 206–7; computer/drawing Kundig 133; on Vico’s aphorism xii relationship 208; curriculum vitae 210; design process Shanghai World Financial Center (Bill Pedersen) 164; early 207–8; drawing and collaborative process 207; thinking sketch 163; sketches 165, 166, 167 drawings 206; see also Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016 Shareway (Höweler + Yoon Architecture): concept sketch of 108; concept sketch, overlap urban form, mobility and land 107; connectivity of car-to-car system 108; design process v 109–10; home of the future 110; rendering, mobility Vico, Giambattista xii “Connector” 111; rendering, South Station 109; sketch Visitor Center, Grand Teton National Park (Peter Bohlin) future intelligent road surface 108 36–7 Siza, Alvaro xii von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang xiii Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture (Phil Freelon) 85–6, 85 Sonoma Vineyard Estate (Aidlin Darling Design) 4–6; w photograph of entry 7; plan and sectional sketch 5 Waipolu Gallery and Studio, Hawaii (Peter Bohlin) 37 Spear, Laurinda: computer/drawing relationship 189–90; Welton, Frances Conway ix, ix cross-fertilization of techniques 190–1; curriculum vitae Williams, Tod: client communication 206–7; computer/ 221 Index

drawing relationship 208; curriculum vitae 210; design Statue of Liberty 143; sketch (1 of 3) 139; sketch (2 of 3) process 207–8; drawing and collaborative process 207; 142; sketch (3 of 4) 143; west side skyline 144 thinking drawings 206; see also Tod Williams Billie Tsien Wright, Frank Lloyd 100 Architects Windhover Contemplative Center, Stanford (Aidlin Darling Design): elevation study 4; plan studies 4, 6 y World Trade Center reconstruction (Daniel Libeskind) 143; Yoon, Meejin: curriculum vitae 111–12; early drawing concept sketches 141; at Night 142; site in relation to experiences 107; see also Höweler + Yoon Architecture Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:56 16 August 2016