A blog entry cannot justify the power hand drawings still have in design, especially in education. Drawings by hand document the path of form making. They make form. A drawing is like a piece of clay, while the pen is the extension of the hand molding the clay into an object. One instantly sees how the forms change and the brain responds immediately to that change to refine the form to its context/environment. The pen in the hand teaches the brain and vice versa. For me drawing is like writing, speaking, discussing with myself and then visualizing an idea spatially. This should be constantly practiced and many different forms of representation techniques should be tried. Like the sound of music, drawings document visually, a mood, an idea, a vision, a thought. The way the drawn line is expressed (controlled or loose) reveals one’s personal statement to the design problem addressed.
The Piranha Story
As project landscape architect & office manager of the Potsdamer Platz Project, Berlin in the 90’s in the office Krüger & Möhrle Stuttgart/Berlin responsible for the design of all the extensive and intensive green roofs, courtyards and atriums we designed the atrium for one of Sir Richard Rogers buildings. The architects envisioned a ‘green’ slope combining the split-level atrium. Prof. Möhrle and I decide to come up with the opposite of the typical lush green calming experience up the escalator. We proposed piranha fish tanks alongside the escalator to create a dramatic sense of arrival. This sketch depicts this idea. At this time architects were not ready for the abstraction or a totally different landscape architecture experience without thinking ‘green’. Since than we have come a long way in landscape architecture. Pioneering work is often hidden on paper, but ‘paper architecture’ is also a design, just not executed, whatever the circumstances might be.
Hello Sketchers and Viewers
Welcome to ‘Off Screen Studio’. This blog has been created for design students, designers and viewers who are interested in hand drawing. The goal of this blog is to show the ‘unedited’ ideation process behind landscape architecture, architecture, urban design and art. Everyone of us has a different method to develop ideas. This blog presents over the next years more then 1000 different sketches of the authors professional career and teaching (1990 – present). Every week new images will be uploaded and their content explained. Under ‘Archive’ drawings are categorized into: design process, digital drawing and land art. In the next months we will be uploading more images in the archive. Under ‘Tutorial’ videos explain how to draw a tree, a shrub, people or the grading of the landscape. More videos will be uploaded over the next months.
