Although the process can take several hours to build up the 
solution(s), the drawings in this book usually take less than 30 
minutes to complete.  Although hand-drawing may seem quaint 
in the age of computer graphics, most design sessions with 
architects usually involve some spontaneous ball-point pens 
scrawls on a legal pad by one of the team members. At the 
Concept or Schematic Design stage, the fluidity of the ideas is 
more important than their precision and this is a role that, some 
believe, hand drawing can still support.
Fortunately, a measure of pleasure and satisfaction can still be 
found for the architect/consultant who uses hand drawing as a 
rapid means to explore options. In recent years, the ink-on-paper 
process has been complemented by the stylus-on-touch-screen 
mode resulting in sketches which can instantly be seen on a 
large screen by a room full of people, emailed across the globe in 
seconds or presented in a WebEx live. The same eye-hand-brain 
process is involved as are the fine motor skills of the fingertips. The 
drawing or sketch is simultaneously the thinking process itself and 
the representation of a solution.
William Logan
Author’s Notes
The drawings in this book are snapshots in a process that happens 
in the Schematic Design and Design Development phase of a 
project. They are part of a feedback loop that takes place with the 
Design Architect to optimize the final building envelope design.
Although the roots of this drawing process were formed during 
my experiences working for Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Peter 
Rice and Frei Otto in the 1970’s, the majority of the work included 
represents design support provided to over forty other architectural 
firms as part of the services provided by the consulting team of 
Israel Berger and Associates and its successor firm Vidaris of New 
York.
The mechanics of the drawing process usually happen freehand on 
11”X 17” tracing paper with a Micron 01 archival ink pen. In the last 
few years, a majority of the sketches were drawn on a 9”X 12” iPad 
using the Paper 53 drawing app. The architect asks for several 
ideas for achieving the design intent and my job is to look at 
structural and buildable solutions based on experience with similar 
projects and the unique demands of the project. In some cases, 
the solutions are novel and will require significant development and 
testing and coordination with the structural engineer’s design. In 
the best scenario, it is a collaborative solution arrived at in brain-
storming sessions with the structural and mechanical engineers 
and the architects in the room at the same time. It often falls to me 
to synthesize the solution into a sketch.
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