Urban Sketching For Architecture

This is the tripod I use. These are clips for holding the paper. This is my sketchbook. This is the watercolor paper that I typically use. Usually around 9 by 12 inches. This is a palette called Yugo. And it's got a screw at the bottom so I can screw it to my tripod. And then it's got a hinge that's pretty tight. And then it's got these kind of magnetic clips where you can put your drawing palette. This is my current watercolor palette. I bought it from Jackson Art in the UK. I typically use a Schmincke watercolors. This is my pencil roll or supply roll. I have a water cup. Erasers. The typical pencil that I use is a 2H pencil. I use a 2H pencil for almost everything. But I do occasionally carry around heavier pencils if I want a thicker line. 2H pencils are what architects usually use to draw with. And do drafting with. And then I have a bunch of collapsible watercolor brushes. These brushes are made out of sable. Which I guess is an animal kind of like a mink. All of my brushes are made out of sable. Except perhaps this one which is a squirrel brush. And they are very expensive and very hard to come by. But they hold water the best. This is my main Schmincke watercolor palette. I generally carry around a fountain pen. Almost always. I don't really draw with a fountain pen that much but occasionally I do. I carry around a little knife to cut the paper off of the palette. Glasses because I'm an old man now. And I need to be able to see. And then the bag that I use changes from time to time depending on how big of a production I'm going at. I have several different sized bags because if I try to do a drawing that's 9 by 12. I'll need a different sized bag than if I'm just using a watercolor sketchbook. Or if I have a much larger sheet of watercolor paper I might need a bigger bag. Act 2. Urban Sketching. Marin Civic Center. Ventrance Memorial Auditorium. I just started. You just started. Oh I see. You don't have to have your eye on the table or something? No. You look through here and then... No I'm recording me drawing. Oh I see how it progresses. So you took classes? Uh yeah. You are an artist. Look at his t-shirt. Are you selling your art? Uh no. Bye bye now. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed Marin Civic Center. One of the buildings on the site was the Ventrance Memorial Auditorium. In drawing the building one realizes several formal devices that Wright uses to make the building feel natural or drawn on the essences of natural forms. Marin Civic Center is situated in the Marin Hills, a series of steep high peaks which are part of the Pacific Coast Ranges mountain system. The center point of these hills is a 2,571 foot Mount Tamalpais near Mill Valley. Wright came to Marin and was dazzled by the mountains and tried to integrate the form of the buildings into the hills. He came from the Midwest and was used to flat ranges where he helped to develop the prairie school of architecture. Seeing the mountains and hills was perhaps amazing to Wright. The dome of the auditorium doesn't reference historic domes from Europe but the curve of the surrounding hills. The vertical masses reference the great redwood trees in the area. The horizontal planes and lines reference the ground plane and ponds and lakes and rivers. In urban sketching for architecture drawing is used to understand phenomena. The attempt is to understand what are the underlying principles that are generating the form. Unlike current post-modern art that is focused on making an image, urban sketching is for thinking and getting at the underlying forces that generate a form. It is visual and graphic thinking. Essences in Architecture In classical thought there was a belief in essences. The idea of essences goes back to Aristotle and Plato in which they believed there was an intrinsic abstract quality that creates phenomena of the real world. Plato called these essences forms or abstract universal logic and the objective world was copies of these forms. The objective world was always changing and thus imperfect while the forms were eternal, universal and complete. Aristotle describes Plato's ideas of form as essences or the basic substance of a thing. This was the view of the classical period and persisted until modern philosophy. Kant and his critique of practical reason brought up the topic of essences and called them nuomen to juxtapose them with phenomenon. Nuomen is an object or an event that exists independently of human perception while phenomena is anything that can be apprehended by the senses. The best expression of essences is in classical art where an artist would try to capture the essence of a subject. The painting or sculpture would seek not just to render a visual likeness of the subject but its internal nature. A portrait painter would not just try to paint the person's features but the internal character. In classical architecture buildings were sited on the landscape based on genus loci or the spirit of the place. This was the character or atmosphere of the place. In classical Greek and Roman religion it was thought that a genus or god inhabited the place. Genus is where our word genius comes from and was one's higher spirit. Did you know the tower on that one? That was completely in a legal height when you put it because you wanted it to have a majestic proportion. So he told the county, oh we need it for this for the radio wave. That wasn't true at all. It's beautiful. Okay, thanks. 3. Frank Lloyd Wright and Renzo Piano's Natural Architecture Academy of Sciences by Renzo Piano After drawing Marin Civic Center, the Veterans Memorial Auditorium by Frank Lloyd Wright, I realized the Academy of Sciences by Renzo Piano was either a direct copy or at least inspiration for this building. I think Piano must have, like Wright, come to San Francisco, saw all the hills, and tried to create a building that integrated with these forms. Piano created a green roof that simulated the hills of San Francisco and the local vegetation was used as their planting. Like Wright, he used the curve of the hills and the roofline. 4. Parti Diagrams Architects often create a parti diagram. This is sometimes called a napkin sketch because it is often created by the architect to show his client the main concept at a dinner party over drinks. It is the design concept of the building form. It is an idea sketch. What is interesting both about Wright and Piano is the idea is the same. A curved roof to represent the local hills. Then creating a horizontal plane to represent the ground plane. Both are trying to mimic the local natural environment. In other words, they are trying to show the natural essence of the place or the genus loci or the spirit of the place.