cool fire

MLH hanging the drawings on 3 Feb

Once a week I lead a class at UC Berkeley Extension, offering students tools to visually explore concepts for the use of space, and to efficiently communicate their ideas with drawings. Something that makes UC Extension different: instructors have day jobs in related fields and do the instructing on the side. We bring biased, contemporary, practical experience to students. 

In Fall 2014 some of the classes will move to 160 Spear, and for Spring 2015 all Extension action moves to the new digs on Spear Street. I look forward to meeting new students there every semester.

blowing Brunelleschi's cover

A student made an excellent observation Wednesday night. After trying to correct a freehand sketch of a scene using new-found perspective tools, she remarked that her initial sketch felt more like the space as she experienced it. The line quality in the first sketch was personal and idiosyncratic, recalling the sensitive lines she generated during blind contour exercises. The "cleaned up" drawing was more like an Etch-a-sketch image.

Anyone who has lost happiness based on a misunderstood email knows that a low-res, virtual, electronic form of communication is full of pitfalls. So much more is happening than what those few text characters convey. The same is true when describing on flat paper a design idea that's to be experienced in the 3D environment.

Linear perspective is only one means of translation, one that has been dominant for centuries. If you've done a perspective construction, you know it's nothing like sketching with a pad of paper on your lap. Much that we have assumed to be highly skilled perspective constructions may in fact have used another translation mode, one that may have seemed more technically accurate at the time. Here is David Hockney refuting the accuracy of single-camera perspective!  Here, a Japanese image provides a comprehensive spatial narrative by other means. If you want to look further, here is Hockney as Toto, pulling away the curtain that (he alleges) hid perspective's Wizard of Oz for 600 years. Consider the "rules" of perspective more as tools, or guidelines, for translating an optical experience that occurs in 3D, over time, onto a flat surface.

The means we use to come up with what "feels" faithful to a visual experience today may also carry a message about our relationship to technology at the time of translation.

observing one's dominion

Many designers like to feel on top of their projects, virtually and figuratively. Using images like this during design development might work for office politics or designer-builder relations, but what end-user ever encounters a building from this angle? Once it's approved, it's a little late to say "Gee, the parapets seem out of proportion." The project above ended with a comic compensation for such oversight. 

3D modeling is now so well-embedded in building industry software, it's easy to periodically examine a project from the user's eye level. If true perspectives are not possible, track a project via elevation, perhaps with figures for scale. Elevations may miss the dimension of depth, but they approximate the user experience more accurately than the above type of view (isometric paraline.)

A designer should know how to request a specific view from software. It's important for design students to understand the basic geometry of linear perspective, since any 3D modeling software is built on classic geometry. At least for now. 

"look what I had to work with"

I like to use concept sketches early on, when data and design are often incomplete. Sketches align expectations and solicit approval among any number of stakeholders. Their rough nature says, "work in progress." They invite input and allow flexibility going forward. Sometimes this quote from the 1989 Batman comes to mind when a client's expectations are too high. It's a thrill to promote a unified vision based on data from varied sources, and to follow a project's development until it goes to bid. Save the full rendering for when project data, modeling tools and time are available to truly solve the design gaps. A renderer may find the archive of hand-sketches helpful to make a finished product.  

what's wrong with this picture?

At lunch the other day, an urban developer pondered, "What's with this designing on computer? I call our architect to ask what his thinking is on the changes we're making. He sends me a computer drawing. All I want to see is a sketch, a drawing of the facade! We're not getting anywhere."
What's wrong with this picture? They both want to move the design along. The developer wants feedback on how a recent discussion is playing out in the design. The architect is taking his client's commentary and implementing it in the building system. Yet the drawing-as-reply did not scratch the question's itch.

Is this a case of media preference, like preferring handwritten notes to typed? Kindle to hardcover? But isn't more information carried by handwriting than typing?Drawings in this post are random examples and bear no relation to the architect or developer in this narrative.

the interview process

Before we were spoiled by digital 3d modeling,
a perspectivist had to be judicious about choosing views.
If a proposed view was rejected, reconstruction could take hours! To avoid redraws, I developed two steps: the interview and view selection. Despite a technological revolution, this prelude remains crucial to creating useful presentation tools for my clients. It's still time-efficient to avoid redraws, but the unintended benefit of these steps is an awareness of the viewing context.

It's short-sighted to ignore the intended audience of an illustration. A concept illustration aims for a particular business outcome. I make every effort to interview the person who will be showing the drawing, the person "taking the heat" -- who is not always the designer. I question aspects of the design that will inform the illustration: should it reflect the visitor experience, the owner experience, the tenant experience, the customer experience, etc? What are the speakers' goals for the presentation? Are there any discussions we don't want to trigger?
What kind of light will best reinforce the presenter's message? What acoustic qualities of the space can be disclosed with visual cues? Who'd be in this space and how are they using it? The answers are not always what's assumed at first; this process examines the designer's objectives relative to those of the presenter.

A computer model does not perform this service.

As computer-generated perspectives became widely available in the 90s, I expected requests for hand-drawn renderings to disappear. Instead, a steady stream of commissions began: to re-create digital presentations that failed! Like structural engineers who visit earthquake sites or roofs collapsed by snow, asking why failure occurred can be very enlightening. On digital re-do projects, the interview process often turns up answers.