master draftsman

I ran in to Ken Sekiguchi, architect, photographer and master draftsman, on Fourth Street the other day. I had the good fortune to be on collaborative teams with Ken at Hanns Kainz' office for about 10 years, on the pencil (vs. mouse) side of the digital divide. Ken's drawings are exquisite examples of hand-drafted orthographic drawings. A medium both aesthetic and practical, his drawings translated gesture, bullshit, and schematic design into something that can be priced, measured and built. Contractors who bid projects based on his drawing sets should have bid low just for the privilege of working from those documents! Instead, because the drawings communicated design so thoroughly, they bid higher since they anticipated their work would be subject to the same scrutiny. What a bind. This image will hold a place until I get my original Ken Sek scanned.

freehand exploded plan oblique

A freehand exploded plan oblique sketch made with layers of trace and printed using ARC Reprographic's old-school, blueprint machine before they sold it for scrap! Now this look is available on the styles menu of Sketchup. Using its line style menu, one can probably get this hand-made feel as well! 
This project is on 16th Street at the base of Potrero Hill in SF, renovation of a deco-style building. A helicopter lowered the space frame into the roofless, squat "tower" of the building at the crack of dawn one cold morning. The resulting sandstorm of urban street grit wrecked all our film cameras.

beautiful book

In addition to the mysteries made visible in this Vince Collins spot, another early influence for me was exploded illustrations of mechanical parts, cars and engines. My dad worked for GM and car imagery was never far from reach. In the early part of my career, I had the pleasure losing myself in the making of these, both ruled and freehand. The best were for Austrian architect Hanns Kainz'projects.
At the AIA convention this spring, I perused a doorstop-weight tome called Architectural Geometry from Bentley Institute. It's a geeky delight, full of complex shapes reduced to their pure geometry and made 2D visible. Thanks, digital age! That really scratches an itch.