London Festival of Architecture 2014/ Bartlett School Summer Show 2014

Hello everybody, so I decided to write a short blog post about the festival of architecture. The idea behind this blog post is that - I was thinking about some architecture competitions I could participate in and accidently I found the article about London Festival of Architecture 2014. 

London Festival of Architecture 2014, includes many of exhibitions, open studios, student shows, and tours. So I marked the events in my calendar I want to go to and there were about 6 exhibitions all together, but I had the opportunity to visit only one of the events. It was Bartlett School of Architecture: Bartlett Summer Show 2014. 

So, a bit more informtion about London Festival of Architecture 2014: 

"The London Festival of Architecture features debates, exhibitions, film screenings, walks, cycle rides, open studios and family events which focus on the importance of architecure and design in London today. An active pragramme of architectural installations and interventions provoke questions about the future life of the city and promotes positive change to the city's public realm."

 - http://www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org/index.php/about

Bartlett School of Architecture: The Bartlett Summer Show 2014

             

The reason why I picked this exhibition or I should call it 'show' is, because I heard about this school before and now I got an opportunity to visit an exhibition with student works from that school. 

People around the globe, travelling to London to Bartlett School Summer Show just to look at the student works. It didn't really make sense for me until I went there. Those all models, designs, drawings, sketches and multimedia instalations were just 'wow'. 

The exhibition showcases the works of over 500 students with a really high quality of skills and creativity, it shows a really high quality of teachers, staff and tutors teaching skills, knowledge, research and work methods.

The Bartlett School's annual Summer Show attracts over 5000 visitors in eight days and over 10 000 visitors all together and forms a key event in the UK architectural calendar.

After the visit at the Bartlett School Summer Show, every single thing that I saw in there, answered my question: "Why people around the world travelling long distances just to look at the student works?".  Because it's worth it to see how students, young students can create a design with really high quality of skills.

             

             

             

Whilst I was at Bartlett School Summer Show, I got scared. I got scared because all the things I saw made me realize how skillful, creative and accurate you have to be in architecture. Let it be a reminder that I just need to work on those things.

So that would be all on this blog post, to find out more about Bartlett School of Architecture go to - http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture

Drawing like an Architect

Today's post is a part 2 of topic - How to sketch like an Architect? Title of today's post is very similar to our topic. So today we again going to look at really good example of Life of an Architect's article - Drawing like an Architect. Bob Borson (creator of: Life of an Architect) received an email of his website's follower, which says: "How can I be an architect, I can't draw". The answer is very simple - You don't have to draw well to be an architect!

Architects communicate through drawing – they aren’t making art. Drawing – or sketching in the case of what architects need – is a skill that anyone can develop with a little training and some practice. 


Here is a page scanned in from Bob Borson's sketchbook. This is where he was sketching out some ideas – none of these are drawn very well but you can probably tell what most of them are – that’s the communicating part of drawing.

I will copy a picture from his post and I will put it in this article. It's a really good example which you can use!

• First thing he does is - sketching a wire diagram, where he blocks out a rough shapes.
• Second thing - lay a tracing paper over the top and go over the shape with a single line to clean it up a bit.
• Last thing - it is not needed if you sketching something not for t-shirt (as Bob Borson does with this picture) he uses photoshop in the last picture, you can just finish it in other way you want. 

One more thing that inspired me from his article was: " I am able to sit down with a client and with a pen and piece of paper draw in real-time in front of them the ideas and concepts we are discussing. It is a powerful communication device and one that I spend a bit of time working on – just so I don’t lose my 

touch."

That's the main points I want to share with you. Hope you will be inspired the same as me.

Link to full post: http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/drawing-like-an-architect/

Got Inspiration, Let's go to update a blog!

Yesterday, new post from Life of an Architect was very inspirational for me so one idea 'pop up' in my head - this term I'm going widely look at the topic of sketches. That means that I am going to share really interesting and helpful posts about sketches, or how to improve your sketching? or how to sketch like an architect? 
The post about How to think like an Architect? was like the start of this topic about how to sketch like an architect < that's really good idea for calling this topic like that!
So today I want to share that post with you! I hope it will inspire you!

Link to the full post: http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/architectural-sketching-or-how-to-sketch-like-bob-borson/

So I am going to look at 5 tips and techniques that should improve your sketching.

TIP #01: “The Hit-Go-Hit”

The ‘Hit-Go-Hit’ tip is a way for you to pick up and set your pen back down on the page as you’re drawing in a purposeful manner. Why would you need to do something like that you ask? Well, tip #02 will elaborate a bit more (come to think of it, Tip #02 should really be the first tip in terms of importance but I’m not going to remake the graphic) but whenever you are drawing a straight line, you’ll frequently find that you need to reposition your arm, or the paper, to continue drawing. Make that reset look intentional and add some graphic flair with this technique.

TIP #02: “Don’t Move your Pen/Pencil by Bending Your Wrist or Elbow”

I should also point out that you shouldn’t “push” your pen across the page, you should always “pull” it. Lock your wrist and elbow into a comfortable angle and only move your entire arm when sketching. As you get more skilled, this tip can be relaxed and you can first bend your elbow and ultimately your wrist. In the beginning, by limiting your movement to the entire arm, you’ll end up with straighter lines. And since you can only move your arm so far, that’s when the hit-go-hit technique comes in.

TIP #03: “Incorporate the Use of Pen Weight”

This technique is a biggie … you have to use line weight to help convey depth to your sketch. More gifted sketchers and take care of depth using hatches and shading techniques so eventually that’s something you can take on. In the meantime, use two pens and get some profile lines into your sketches.

Another benefit to using a heavy pen is that it can help show you what you should be looking at – what the point of the sketch might be. Multiple pen weights help the viewer understand the order of things within the drawing, and through proper technique, they can also show to the viewer what’s not important in the sketch.

TIP #04: “Intersect Your Lines at the Corners”

This is pure style and allows the inexact nature of a sketch to come across as what it is – a delineated representation of a thought or concept.The inexact nature of the sketch – when attempted to be exact – looks sloppy and, well … inexact. By allowing your lines to cross at the corners, you can still convey the thought (or shape) you are going after, without having to focus on making the shape perfect. There is a “in-the-moment” that sketches imply and if you look at the two rectangles illustrated above, I think the one on the left looks far better despite the fact that it is far less precise or exact than the rectangle on the right.

TIP #05: “Trace Paper isn’t Precious … Draw in Layers” 

Design is an additive process so why shouldn’t your sketch be as well? Since most of my sketches happen on trace paper and not in a sketch book, I am able to lay sketch upon sketch on top of one another to build up and refine my sketches. I may start with a clean piece of trace paper for every sketch, but it’s only that first sketch that doesn’t have the benefit of something prior to work from.

That's it. Here are the 5 ways or techniques (sounds better), that should make your sketches look better and you will put more discipline in your sketches.

I recommend you to read the full post if you want to be inspired!