4
I have Peter Chermayeff of Cambridge 7 
Associates to thank for giving me my first job 
after Harvard’s GSD, drawing curtain wall details 
for the new England Aquarium with wax leads on 
mylar.
In particular, I want to thank Richard Rogers 
and Renzo Piano for hiring me off the streets of 
Paris to work on the design of Centre Pompidou, 
a project often compared to the Eiffel Tower in 
its audacity and brilliance. It was there that my 
colleagues Alan Stanton, Mike Davies and Shunji 
Ishida revealed to me how to work with hand 
sketches to quickly create design studies.
While working in Paris, I met Peter Rice who 
was the engineer from Ove Arup and Partners 
in charge of Centre Pompidou’s innovative 
structural design. Having just completed 
the design for the Sydney Opera House, his 
reputation proceeded him, and most of us at 
Piano and Rogers were in awe of his brilliance.
Acknowledgements
 
The sketches in this book are by the author 
and are support documents that attempt to 
implement the Design Architect’s intent for the 
building envelope. As such, credit for the designs 
belongs to those firms named on these pages. 
Sometimes the intent is expressed in a phrase 
such as “maximize transparency” whereas 
in other circumstances the modulation and 
expression of a façade is highly detailed in the 
concept phase and the consultant’s role is to 
make it happen as drawn.
For a young architect, it helps to see the hand 
drawing process in action in a meeting or sitting 
side-by-side with an experienced designer, 
engineer or architect. I was fortunate enough to 
be instructed and inspired by the likes of Michael 
Graves, Renzo Piano, Frei Otto, and Norman 
Foster, who each always had a pen or felt-tip 
handy during a design session (green in the case 
of Renzo). The fluidity of a hand-drawn line by 
one of these masters was always a source of 
inspiration yet also an essential tool to create a 
coherent design.
Fortunately Peter was very approachable and 
sociable. During one dinner with friends, he 
asked me if I would like to move to London to 
work in the Lightweight Structure Laboratory at 
Arup. Part of my job was to fly periodically to 
Stuttgart to help Frei Otto, the designer of the 
tent-like German Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, 
develop the special structures for the Saudi 
Arabian Houses of parliament. Needless to say, 
I accepted. I have Peter to thank for this and for 
a joyful and productive three years in London. 
Sadly Peter passed away at the age of 57, soon 
after receiving the RIBA Gold Medal.
Frei Otto was an inspiration from my days 
in graduate school, especially from his book 
STRUCTURES and his work at the Institute for 
Lightweight Structures in Stuttgart. He drew 
beautifully and encouraged me to sketch details 
based on the hanging chain models we were 
working on for the Houses of Parliament.

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