The Construction Sketch as Disruptive Act
By Savvas Sarafidis, AIA Assoc., LEED Green Assoc.
Senior Architectural Designer
Sketches by Savvas Sarafidis, SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership
In the age of parametric digital tools, complex algorithms, robots, and artificial intelligence, the old analog hand-sketch is still refusing to go away. In fact, it is showing signs of a renaissance, as more designers and engineers recognize -again- the sketch as a vital part of every intuitive creative process. Sketching has always been much more than another graphic tool. It is the result of a relentless cognitive and bodily procedure, during which the human mind, hand, and eyes collaborate and coordinate to deliver thought in visual and physical means. Even more for architects, this process is absolutely interwoven to our ways of working.
It is almost impossible for an architect to grasp, analyze, and internalize architecture through vision only. To achieve this, we use our hands to draw, describe, and transcribe what we see. This is how we understand things, their structure, form, and detail. As the image takes shape on the paper through the movement of the hand, it is being simultaneously imprinted in mind and analyzed. Vice versa, the fastest and most accurate way to express a thought is by sketching a few lines. Even words most of the time cannot keep up with the speed, directness, and accuracy of a sketch.
Sketch Types and Qualities
Sketches by Savvas Sarafidis, SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership
The architectural sketch can take many forms, depending on the needs and choices of its creator; it can have varying contents and characteristics. It can be descriptive, explanatory, instructional, revelatory, or abstract. Above all, it can be a profound act of disruption when used to represent something new, an idea, a concept, or a method, to be cast as a realistic possibility. This possibility did not exist before, or at least was not apparent before the drawing put it in the frame and ecosystem of the project. This uniquely positive disruption requires speed, agility, flexibility, and iteration; these characteristics dramatically improve the likelihood of the innovation to occur. This possibility is subjective of course, as the sketch creator constantly chooses what is important to represent and what is not. This reductive personal dimension is the basis of every synthetic process in art and architecture.
As Michael Graves writes in an NYT article in 2012, “I have a real purpose in making each drawing, either to remember something or to study something. Each one is part of a process and not an end in itself. I’m personally fascinated not just by what architects choose to draw but also by what they choose not to draw.” [1] The sketch drawing becomes a document and testament to self-discovery as it reveals its creator’s vision.
The Construction Sketch
Sketch by Savvas Sarafidis, SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership
Out of all the types of architectural sketches, the construction sketch is the one that most closely represents a possible reality that is not abstract or utopic. Each line has substance and character that expresses size, thickness and weight, material, and color, but also cost and labor. The construction sketch reveals the urgency and effort to describe and fulfill the work down to its spare parts, to its smaller details. Less analytical and more synthetic, it combines the advanced work information with older and newer technologies to resolve construction issues, to use the materials in optimal ways, and come up with ways that this focused study will confirm and add to the big idea, the main concept of the project.
“An element of magic resides even in this final phase of communicating instructions for execution…” [2]
From Paper to Reality
Sketch and photos by Savvas Sarafidis, SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership
In the last 3 years since I joined SKOLNICK, I was lucky to be involved in the day-to day administration of a landmarked townhouse restoration and renovation project in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. To my astonishment, and despite being a career-long proponent of digital media and means in architecture, while studying this historic and elegant building and interacting with the contractor in handling daily tasks and issues, two things soon became apparent to me: First, the work contained an abundance of delicate requirements and idiosyncratic detailing that required a certain degree of sensitivity and lyrical effort best served by the artistic allure and spontaneity of a hand-drawn sketch, and second, the contractor and their craftsmen showed a rare appreciation of the approach, that soon became excitement and eagerness to receive the next sketch to decipher and translate into realized experience. Every detail became an event, a small challenge to surmount, a small act of disruption in the regular course of the work.
The construction sketches carried levels of information of varying importance for the work that needed to be directly and easily understood by the contractor, sometimes right on site. This was the common, universal language of the architect and the craftsman that served the need to manually resolve an issue quickly and effectively, answer a question, crystallize a thought. Different techniques or colors were used to clarify the items that came together to perform a specific function or highlight the connections of a wooden or metal element. A lot of times they were drawn in a haste and could be rough, but they never lacked accuracy or scale. Drawing quickly in different scales allows for the hand and mind to explore and fully understand space, dimensions, and proportions that are difficult to fathom in the 1:1 digital space of Computer-Aided Design.
Sketch and photo by Savvas Sarafidis, SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership
“The drawing is a reminder of the idea that caused me to record it in the first place. That visceral connection, that thought process, cannot be replicated by a computer”, writes Michael Graves. It is non-linear and non-binary; it requires complex mental interactions and a combination of various building details. Most of all, it requires a certain degree of emotional connection with the specific work that cannot be registered by computers. When the contractor disagreed with a decision, or when there was a dispute over schedule or cost, that all usually required a level of emotional intelligence and the need to think and react in real-time. While digital tools assist architects, they only help solve a small piece of the design and construction puzzle.
Sketching can help us do the rest. It is not neutral, like taking a photo, but delves deep into discovery and creative insight in an iterative and often circular way. Sometimes you must shuffle the pieces, rethink or completely start again before reaching the proper and finite conclusion, and that endeavor is the source of innovation.
[1] Michael Graves, Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing, Article in the New York Times, Sept. 1, 2012
[2] Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture
This post is illustrated with construction sketches hand-drawn during the Construction Administration phase of a renovation to a landmarked townhouse in NYC Upper East Side, designed by SKOLNICK with Interior Design by Peter Marino Architects.