Originally recorded on Thursday, June 20, 2024. The full broadcast of the 2024, 50th Annual Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition is available now online. Click the “Play the Video” button to watch the recorded broadcast.
You can read the full transcript in the post below, or click on an image to go directly to the juror commentary in the transcript for that winning entry.
Zaida Basora, FAIA: Good day and good evening, everyone. I am Zaida Basora, Chief Executive Officer of AIA Dallas. It’s my pleasure to welcome you all to the 50th annual Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition Announcement.
That’s a mouthful.
We have a stellar panel of jurors and an equally impressive and inspiring collection of award-winning works of architectural delineation.
As we began reflecting on this 50th anniversary of the competition, we thought of the sustainability of this competition as a remarkable testament to the legacy of drawing and the importance of visualization in architecture and design.
Architects and designers use architectural delineation to fuel their passion for design. It’s a platform that allows them to express their ideas, explore new possibilities, and engage with the rich visual language of architecture.
We recognize and celebrate the evolution of media and the innovative approach to sharing and conveying design ideas.
Thank you all for joining us today as we announce the winners. Before we start the program, I want to thank our sponsors.
Thank you to HKS, a sponsor of this competition for over a decade, and our presenting sponsor for the past six years.
Today we have Julie Hiromoto, FAIA, Director of Innovation and Partner at HKS, who will say a few words. Julie.
Julie Hiromoto, FAIA: Thank you, Zaida. Hello, everyone from Dallas, Texas. It is an honor to welcome you to today’s KRob broadcast. A 50-year anniversary is a major milestone to celebrate and, in our world of fast-paced change, remaining relevant and sustaining a program over five decades is truly commendable.
The Ken Roberts Delineation Design Competition is a one-of-a-kind program. No other AIA chapter has a drawing competition, and this is the longest running architectural drawing competition globally.
Give yourselves a round of applause because this is something to celebrate.
HKS has been a proud sponsor of this unique program. For so many years, many of our team members have competed, juried, contributed to, and led the program from the very early days.
KRob provides a platform for our employees to grow as leaders within the AIA Dallas community, and many have been honored and celebrated with awards of their own, among some very stiff competition.
I’d like to say thank you to all of this year’s entrants for sustaining this program with your interest and entries, and to this year’s organizing team and jury who consistently deliver a high-quality program with amazing results that we will celebrate today.
It’s hard work, but oh, so rewarding. Thank you.
ZB: Thank you so much for your support, Julie. We also want to thank our Gold Sponsor Corgan, who is producing and broadcasting this event; our Silver Sponsor, Gensler; and OMNIPLAN for their contribution; and Archistration for their in-kind sponsorship.
Thank you, Jeff, for all you do for us.
Again, thank you to all sponsors.
Before I turn it over to Tenaj, I would also like to invite you all to come to the Architecture and Design Exchange on July 25th to the Gallery Opening Party of the KRob exhibition.
The exhibition will open on June 26th and will run through August 17.
With that, I’ll turn it over to you, Tenaj, to begin the program. Thank you.
Tenaj Pinder, Assoc. AIA: Thank you, Zaida, for bringing us in.
Good afternoon, esteemed guest. My name is Tenaj Pinder, and alongside me is Selina Cinecio. We have had the privilege of serving as Chair and Vice-Chair for the year of 2024, bringing with us over six plus years of dedicated service on the committee.
Today, we gather to celebrate excellence in architectural drawings and illustration, a longstanding tradition in Dallas, renowned for its international acclaim.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the KRob Awards, a milestone we are commemorating with an upcoming release of a special 50th anniversary book at the year’s end.
We are thrilled to announce that we have received an impressive 290 entries from around the globe, spanning from the United States to Germany, China, the UK, France, Canada, and beyond.
These submissions showcase exceptional talent from both students and professionals alike.
Out of these entries, we have selected eight winners who will each receive a cash prize, in addition to recognizing four entries with juror citations.
The works of these finalists, totaling 66 in number, will be prominently displayed on our website (krobarch.com).
We are truly impressed, not only by the quantity, but also the remarkable quality of the submissions this year, making it one of the most competitive to date.
We are eager to present this year’s deserving winners.
A comprehensive interview is available courtesy of our Corgan Media Lab, and we just want to say thank you for helping us broadcast this out to the globe, and thank you for your support.
We also would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has contributed to our committee this year, as well as Josh Nason and Madi Melton on the team bringing the dedicated effort to the 50th anniversary KRob book.
We are looking forward to its release later this year. And with that, I will now pass it over to Selina to introduce the moderator for the special 50th anniversary event.
Selina Cinecio, AIA: Thank you, Tanaj. Here we have with us moderating Joshua Nason, Dean of Hammond School of Architecture at Drury University.
He is Director of a collaborative design practice called Iterative Studio, and he has also been on the KRob committee for nine years and a frequent moderator of our event.
Previously, he was Assistant Director for the School of Architecture at University of Texas at Arlington, where he taught for 12 years following three years at Texas Tech.
Teaching is his passion. He teaches design studio and classes on theory, drawing, and making.
For him, it’s cultivating a series of experience that helps students realize their authentic potential to impact the built world.
As an educator, he emphasizes quality instruction and curricular innovation to imbue students with skills and confidence to advanced architecture. Josh approaches everything as a design project.
He works across mediums, including writing, drawing, and building, all of which he considers acts of architecture that mediate between people and places.
Thank you, Josh, for joining us here today.
Josh Nason: Thank you, Selena. It’s quite an honor and privilege to be here today. I want to thank everyone for including me again this year, and I want to thank my devoted friends and colleagues in making this happen.
We’re really excited to celebrate 50 years of this wonderful competition and the terrific work that has been submitted.
And it’s my great honor to moderate this conversation and to talk with our jurors, and I want to introduce you to them now.
Our jurors this year are Dana Cupkova, Michael Ford, Petra Kempf, and Samuel Ringman. And as we go along today, each of these jurors are going to present a couple of the awards, and as they present those awards, we’ll do a little bit more in-depth bio and they will present some of their work to you as well.
To kick that off, we’d like to start with Sam Ringman.
Sam Ringman: Hello, I’m Sam Ringman, and I’m an architect architectural illustrator and artist working here in Dallas for the last 41 years. I’ve been involved with KRob for most of that time, usually as a participant and now twice as a as a juror.
As a professional illustrator, I’ve worked in a whole range of media and techniques on a whole range of projects for a whole range of clients doing everything from cocktail napping sketches to full blown watercolors.
That doesn’t even include the non-architectural work that I’m not even showing here, such as the Christmas cards and portraits and posters and t-shirts and so on.
To me, the more variety and the type of work the better. So, instead of specializing in one or two media and seeking out clients to match those media, basically a jack of all trades, my approach has always been that I have a solution to the client’s problem no matter what the budget or timeframe.
I feel the illustrator is part of the design team and is the illustrator’s job to tell the most appropriate story in the most appropriate way.
The media I use include pencil colored pencil, ink, watercolor, water marker, and all sorts of combinations of the of the above.
There are, however, two techniques that are unique to me that I would like to call out here.
One is what I call my Frank Lloyd Wright technique, which is where I take my standard layout and pencil on yellow trace, which is the first stage for almost every rendering.
Anyway, turn it over and put some colored pencil on the back and voila finished rendering.
It’s quick and cheap, and I push these drawings as drawings that look like drawings, which is why most people would need me these days.
The other is a marker technique that can look like watercolor and is realistic, but it’s quicker and cheaper than watercolor.
And these days, unfortunately cheaper is better.
Basically, I do everything except digital. In a day and age where everybody and his brother can produce a digital image, part of a standard architectural education, trying to stand out as a guy who can still craft an image by hand.
I’ve considered trying to catch up on the latest digital tools in order to have those tools in the in the toolbox.
But the fact is, there are plenty of people out there who can do that, but not so many who can do what I do.
Okay. So, that’s my pitch to all you prospective clients out there. Now let’s talk a little bit about the images you see scrolling by here. As you can see, I do a variety of stuff.
Some of these are actual client-driven projects but most of this is the fun stuff that I produce for myself and for competitions like KRob. There are some common things.
I have a thing for towers, houses on cliffs, and the integration of toys into renderings.
One of these toy images that I would like to call out here is the giant rubber duck you saw a moment ago titled “Late Entry in the Dallas Arena Competition,” which I wrote a whole essay on for the KRob 50th anniversary book.
So, if you want to read that, you’ll have to get a copy of the book when it comes out this fall.
A few of the other images are sci-fi, scenarios. I like to speculate on the future and create new worlds.
The interstellar image in particular is a page from a possible graphic novel and is an exercise in world building and storytelling, and an opportunity to include some sex and violence in a rendering.
The topographic pieces are all local features here in Dallas. Someday, perhaps I’d like to do a book on Dallas architecture. The skyline image is the view from my office of the downtown Dallas skyline, with of course Godzilla.
Also, you might have noticed that there are a couple of versions of the same subjects here, study versions and finished versions.
I found that if you have a good idea, the communication of that idea should bear up at all stages of its development. However, honestly, I usually for the studies over the final pieces.
So, that’s where I’m coming from. I usually deal with pictures rather than words. So, I hope an old architectural perspectivist’s view on things was of some value to you. If nothing else, I hope you at least enjoyed the pretty pictures.
So, thank you for your time.
JN: Thank you, Sam. It’s great to see your work. I particularly like the variety pack with the towers in the box. It’s such a great drawing.
Now that you’ve seen a little bit of Sam’s work, let me tell you a little bit about him.
Samuel Ringman is a registered architect and architectural illustrator, practicing in Dallas for 41 years. An internationally recognized artist, he has received numerous awards in ASAI’s architecture in perspective competitions, KRob, and others; and has been featured in publications such as Architectural Rendering, The Art of Architectural Drawing, and the upcoming KRob 50th anniversary book. Working in a variety of media and techniques, he provides illustration services for an international base of architects, interior designers, and developers.
While emphasizing the illustrator’s role as part of the design team, he provides clients with a wide range of options, from loose sketches to finely detailed renderings, and produces images that are both representative and evocative. He’s presently producing the illustrations for the upcoming A Field Guide to American Buildings.
Thank you, Sam, for joining us.
And for those of you that are joining online, to give you a little bit of idea of structure is, we’re going to introduce a juror, and then that juror’s going to help me announce the winners of a couple of categories.
And it’s our great pleasure now to announce the first winner.
The first category we’d like to announce is the HKS Award for Best Hand Delineation by a Student.
And the winner of this category is Garrett Nagorzanski from the University of Notre Dame.
Congratulations, Garrett.
Now, Sam, you had a lot of really great comments about this project, specifically the use of abstraction and how it actually is a kind of timeless way of drawing this. Tell us a little bit more about this project and, and why Garrett’s a winner.
SR: Yeah. I personally was disappointed to see that this was the least entered category with all the digital tools available these days.
Students apparently are not drawing as much as they used to. But, having said that there were still many fine pieces in the group.
Also, we don’t often see paintings in this category, but this one really stood out.
It is called Dirubian Caustics, and is described by the artist as an idea, loose and sketchy, of a proposed revitalization of an international film school in San Antonio de Los Anos in Cuba.
I see it as an impression of a building, something still being formed rather than as a final product to get even the more romantic about it, one imagines the mid-century modern buildings, presumably seeing better days simmering between jungle and sky in the tropical landscape, almost as if it were dissolving in the in the humidity somewhere between what was and what could be. And somewhere between an idea and a depicted reality.
And well, you know, this painting moves me to say, you know, things like that, then it’s, I feel it’s more than just architectural rendering. Garrett if the architectural thing doesn’t work out, you know, there is always painting.
Anyway, it’s a beautiful and evocative piece.
So, congratulations to Garrett.
JN: Yeah, thank you, Sam. Yes. And congratulations, Garrett.
Sam, I love the way that you talk about this as the impressions of a building and the atmospheric quality where you can almost feel the air. And I think the medium using drawing and painting does such a good job. Also, the super imposition of almost a detail up in the corner. It’s really, really a terrific piece. So, congratulations, Garrett.
Thank you, Sam.
The next category that we’d like to announce is the HKS Award for Best Hand Delineation by a Professional.
The winner of this category is Scott Tulay from Stern McCafferty Architects. Congratulations, Scott.
And Sam, one thing that you mentioned in talking about this was pulling excerpts from the actual artist’s description of this project.
Tell us more about how this thing is conceived.
SR: Yeah, here, the description by the artist puts the most succinctly. So, I’ll just start with that quote.
“This drawing combines two separate hand drawings in graphite powder, charcoal, and ink.
One architectural construct was then cut and merged onto the framework of the of the other.
These two drawings were both drawn without consideration for the other.”
So, apparently the process is what’s all in important here.
This is literally deconstruction, fragmenting the world into its component parts, and then reassembling it to give it new form and meaning, an automatic drawing if you will, and achieves the kind of complexity that is sometimes easier to obtain by chance and than by design.
Well, it takes a certain amount of courage and a reliance on serendipity to produce two presumably fine original drawings, then destroying both of them in the hopes of producing something better.
There was a companion piece to this that we felt was almost as strong, but we what we chose this one. Beyond that, how many previous and unsuccess unsuccessful attempts that were with this technique we don’t know, but it’s most definitely works here.
So, congratulations to Scott for a fine piece.
JN: Thank you, Sam. Yes, and congratulations, Scott. This drawing is really incredible.
I mean, through black, white, and gray there has these simple, simple colors. You get this tremendous depth, and you see this fragmentation and layering almost as an architectural scaffold that’s holding this drawing together and building this composition.
It’s really, really remarkable and almost references so many of, my favorite drawings over the years. It’s really, really incredible.
It’s now my great honor to introduce our, our next juror. Dana Cupkova is a co-founder and design director of EPIPHYTE Lab, an interdisciplinary architectural design and research collaborative that was recognized in 2018 as the next progressives design practice by Architect Magazine.
She holds an associate professorship at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture, where she serves as a graduate chair for the Master of Science and Sustainable design. Engaging environmental ethics, Donna’s design work is situated at the intersection of built environment and ecology. Focused on materiality, embodied energy, and advanced manufacturing frameworks with a particular interest in thermodynamics and material waste streams.
Dana is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Architectural Computing, a recipient of the 2019 Acadia Teaching Award of Excellence, the 2022 ACSA Creative Achievement Award, and a 2022, 2023 Fulbright US Scholar.
She’s also a friend and one of my favorite professors that I’ve ever had. So, Dana, thank you so much for joining us.
Tell us a little bit more about your work.
Dana Cupkova: Thank you, Josh, for that introduction and a little bit of a memory lane. Thanks for having me, and this is incredible competition.
It’s been a really great pleasure to see all the work.
So, I’d like to show you a little bit of my own work before we start with the next round of awards.
I direct a design research collaborative titled EPIPHYTE Lab that advances a holistic vision of the build environment which is grounded in relationship between ecology and technology.
In nature, the epiphyte is a non-parasitic plant, just like orchid or an air plant. It survives off moisture in natural settings or the other plants.
So, it needs a very little to survive on its own.
In our work the EPIPHYTE becomes a model of attunement with the environment, suggesting a different ways of transcribing a more resilient architectural forms that encompass material circularity within their organization.
So, my work is really focused on placemaking and shaping through the set of invisible forces, whether geopolitical, material, ecological, while engaging with projects across scale from landscapes to interiors and material research.
So this way of working positions architecture relative to environmental stewardship.
And it also uses drawing in a very specific way as kind of a hybrid construct that is both intuitive and informed by processes of making within a specific context.
So, this is evident from our research project called Rocking Cradle, reconstructing geology on a damaged earth that proposes an engagement pathways within communities that are affected by environmental pollution and promotes more sustainable development practices, through a proposition of new elements of green infrastructure that nurture the landscape.
These cradles that are 3D printed from sand are shaped and drawn through simulated drawing and modeled behavior of water and geology in the hope of raising awareness of natural water management cycle and their connection to clean air, air, and soil.
In SENYA, the interior project titled Bolted Acoustics, these shaping strategies are focused on instrumentalization of sound reflection to create a specific effect and spatial experience mitigated by geometry.
The drawings here are constructed to trace frequencies of reverberation and shape construction of these ellipsoid bulbs in making the sound and global diffusion more pleasant and to effect a very soft spatial quality, so soft space out of hard materials in a very cost effective way.
Another project is HSU House is an instrument of thermal exchange.
It’s designed using passive solar principles and geometry of thermal mass that creates a compact energy efficient dwelling and cooling effects of the geometry of thermo moss wall, are really helping for the house not to need to use mechanized air conditioning.
So, this is the geometry of thermo moss wall regulates thermo reactivity through kind strategic delay of heat exchange in the summer.
Mapping and drawing of environmental patterns are part of a concept of what I call ecological intimacy in architecture.
And it’s a way of working that we embrace both analytically and aesthetically.
And Green Negligee project is a very old project of EPIPHYTE Lab that jumpstarted our practice.
It really used mapping of emerging ecologies in the context of post-Soviet housing block to propose green infrastructure. Water for water filtration system rooted in the territory of the building landscape, and in some way for it to become an instrument or resistance that created public space during the time that the land was sold off in a big box development that was sort the previous light.
This one looks at material scale and drawing allowing us to shape ecological biomes within a facade paneling system that allows for water capture for moss and lichen.
And it’s essentially a prototype focus on relationship of overall tile geometry and surface porosity to enable growth moss and hydration, and thus transforming architectural façade system in a tree trunk like form. A living, breathing self-regulating system.
Similarly to, the next project that is looking up similar kind of relationship of geometry and heat transfer through the thermal mass.
And it investigates effects of complex geometry on a process of passive heat distribution.
And so essentially how we can shape the surfaces of buildings or elements, architectural elements, that allows us to actuate these types of different dynamic exchanges through shaping surfaces and reduce our reliance on mechanical systems, especially if coupled with mold less fabrication such as robotics that helps to reduce embodied energy of materials.
And similar concept that is expanded into the use of thermal activated color or thermal chronic color.
This is a radiant panel prototype that, in which the surface drawing emerges reactively based on the responses of our presence in a room and reactive temperature.
So, and this is the final slide, which talks about the drawing in my practice that connects information with reactivity expression and kind of informational uncertainty, while provoking very ambiguous interpretation of ecological processes, and highlights their importance or impact on shaping architecture in a more caring and resilient way.
Thank you.
JN: Thank you, Dana, for sharing your crucial and important work with us. It’s beautiful to see.
We now get to introduce the next winner, which is for the Award for Excellence in Emerging Technologies.
And the winner of this category is Taesoo Kim, AIA Associate for TKADS+.
Dana, I won’t preface this. You had such terrific words about the meaning and the weight of this drawing. Please tell us more about it.
DC: Thank you, Josh, for introducing the winner, and thank you, Taesoo, for sharing this work with us.
I love this drawing collage because it is so relevant to our AI infused era. To me and represents a rupture of both our infatuation and fear with the new technologies.
It has a kind of an elusive character and a beauty weirdness, and ambiguity, that is coming from what is coming in the future, and which is contrasted with the order of human rigidity and control within a background.
And we can think about it as a kind of a critique of a human future that misunderstands its own creations. As well as critique of ethical frameworks of AI that is trained essentially on human creativity, while using unjust human labor to produce new levels of both wonder and control.
So, the warning here is that I think that only through a deeper knowledge and understanding of technology, rather than its rejection or ignorance, we can really only embrace and understand our own human agency of world making towards better human future.
So, thank you for sharing this drawing and collage, and congratulations.
JN: Yes, absolutely. Congratulations.
I think the stark nature of this struck us both Dana, like the, the power of this, it really does have a kind of critique on control, and you talked about beauty and weirdness and the balance between those.
It’s really, really incredibly done.
The next category that we would like to announce is the Award for Excellence in Digital Hybrid Media by a Student.
The winner of this category is Eugene Tan from Park and Associates / National University of Singapore. There’s, this really is a drawing in world making in a way.
Dana, tell us, tell us more about your thoughts on this one.
DC: So, this drawing is a hybrid collage constructed from a series of elevations, axonometrics, and aerial views of larger territory.
It references a medieval technique of mapping and viewing the world from multiple perspectives at the same time and across the different scales.
It also cross references the large scale ecological phenomena and seasonal changes with series of localized architectural conditions and more intimate human engagements.
So, it really creates this network of holistic views and reactions to the world.
As a jury, I think we appreciated the deeply layered nature of the drawing that attempts to look at architecture as deeply engaged with its environment and represents it situationally as a dynamic response to the island’s territory.
And the drawing really draws you in. It makes you wander across its surface and linger, studying these different intricate details, while also creating this holistic view from the world.
So it tries to combine multiple perspective in a really successful and beautiful way.
Thank you, Eugene.
JN: Yeah, in the juror discussion, layering was brought up in many drawings, but specifically in this one.
And, and Dana, you did a terrific job talking about this.
I think there’s this moment where circles are really hard to do as isolated objects within a drawing. But the link between this being a drawing of an island and then operating as an island within the page as well, is this incredible reference to itself.
And then I, of course, love mapping.
So, this idea of these medieval mapping techniques and embedded in this is just really, really remarkable.
Congratulations, Eugene. Thanks for your work.
I’d like now to introduce our, our next juror, Michael Ford, AIA, NOMA and NCARB.
Michael Ford is an award-winning architect and educator. He’s originally from Highland Park, Michigan and is now based in Dallas, Texas. Ford is making waves in the design world with his pioneering program, the hip hop architecture camp, which uses hip hop culture to introduce underrepresented youth to architecture and design.
The unique approach to diversifying the design professions has earned Ford national acclaim with features and media outlets such as Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday, the Today Show, Rolling Stone Magazine, Architect Magazine and Interior Design Magazine. As a sought-after speaker, Ford has keyed national conferences around the world, and including the American Institute of Architects National Conference on Architecture, American Planning Association’s, National Planning Conference, NeoCon, Interior Design Show Toronto, and his TEDx Talk, Hip Hop as Modernism’s Post Occupancy Report.
Ford is also the Founding Principle of BrandNu Design Studio, a full service architecture and design studio based in Dallas, Texas. Ford’s Studio is leading the design of notable projects such as the Universal Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx and the Black Inventors Hall of Fame in Newark, New Jersey.
Ford has received numerous accolades for his contributions to the field, including the 2022 Wisconsin Young Architect of the Year, and the Spirit of Detroit Award.
However, he’s most proud of Mike Ford Day, a day dedicated to him at Cass Technical High School in Detroit because of his commitment to youth.
At the heart of it all, Ford is a devoted husband and father to his sons, the late MJ three, and Mason.
Unfortunately, Michael’s not able to join us today, so I’m going try to, to step in and talk about some of these projects. But as we transition into this, I just want to add more emphasis on the importance of the Hip Hop Architecture Camp.
If you’re not familiar with that, please become more familiar with it. Please look that up, and there’s opportunities to volunteer to help fund, to participate in bringing this tremendous thing forward.
So, thank you, Michael, for all of your hard work and tremendous impact.
The next award we’d like to announce is the Award for Excellence in Animation.
The winner of this category is Joseph Altshuler, Myles Emmons, and Amir Zarei from Could Be Design.
Congratulations on this Joseph, Myles, and Amir.
This project, I think, is incredibly evocative.
As you watch it scroll, you see this collection of what they describe as architectural creatures. These elements that are embedded in this.
It started as a, initially as a 10 foot long drawing that then was gone back and taken into this medium and illustrated.
And you see the kind of use of color, the simple palettes of the range of blues to white, and then this red line that pulls you through it.
You could also imagine if it was just a paper drawing, that red line would pull you all the way through it as well.
But I think the thing I like most about it, and something that the jurors mentioned as we discussed this, was how this actually conflates place, history, futures, features, architectural elements.
It has this way of pulling all of these disparate moments and pulling them together into one cohesive animation that pulls you through a kind of poignant history of some of these pieces of architecture in a rather whimsical way.
It’s beautifully drawn and it’s very well constructed and orchestrated, and it’s very deserving winner.
So, congratulations to our winners.
The next category we’d like to announce is the Richard B. Farrier Award for Best Physical Delineation.
And this year’s winner is Brad McCorkle from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Congratulations, Brad.
As you can see, this is an incredibly detailed picture, and if you’re not familiar with the history of KRob going back 50 years, the initial years where every submission was a physical submission, something that was brought or delivered to the AIA Dallas office. And we’ve continued that tradition with physical submissions.
And you can see, that there’s these incredible opportunities to recognize this work.
And the work of the author here really hearkens back to a kind of tectonic understanding of how a drawing is assembled.
It’s almost a series of frames or windows that are layered, and you see these moments of literal, of phenomenal transparency that are piled up on one another.
But what’s interesting is that the, the mediums that are used here, from watercolor to drawing, to graphite, to basswood, you can really see the care that’s put into the assembling of this.
And it really does read like an assemblage, almost a dialogue where you put one thing down and then judge it and put another thing down, and you’re in a dialogue with the drawing and in exchange, as it’s built and kind of constructs this idea about making and about communicating this piece. It’s really, really remarkable and very, very well done.
Congratulations, Brad.
I’d like to introduce our next juror.
This is a great honor to have Petra back with us. Petra Kempf, PhD from Washington University, the Sam Fox School. She’s an architect and an urban designer, and a professor of architecture.
Her creative practice and research speculate on how the assemblage of collective living has been influenced by urbanization.
Prior to pursuing an academic career, Petra worked for the Department of City Planning in New York City, the Project for Public Space, and Richard Meyer and Partners. She has taught at Cornell University, Columbia University, Rhode Island School of Design, Parson School of Design, and the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany.
She has lectured throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.
And her drawings have been exhibited at many venues, including the architecture Venice Biennale, the Chicago Biennial, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pinkcomma Gallery in Boston, and Rocha Gallery in London, among other galleries and academic institutions across the United States and Europe.
She’s the author of, “You Are The City: Observation Organization and Transformation of Urban Settings.” And if you don’t know that book, look it up. It’s just one of my favorites.
And she’s also the author of “No Place, Nowhere: Transit Space in the Urban Network.”
Apart from her research work, she continuously explores the concept of line drawings as agents to communicate the creation of place, a process where lines are being drawn to only be undrawn to record a journey through space, and to construct place.
Petra, thank you for joining us. We’d love to hear more about your work and see some of your beautiful drawings.
Petra Kempf, PhD: Thank you so much, Josh. Always a pleasure to be part of this year. And thank you for inviting me back.
So, as you just said, my creative practice, as well as my research actually do speculate on how collective living is and has been influenced by urbanization. And based on these parameters, I apply a variety of different kind of mediums and mechanisms to my work, such as development of games, which I also apply in my teaching pedagogy. As well as the application of drawing as a tool, to unfold and explore visual journeys for space and time to unfold place.
And in 2023, we presented at a conference, a game called Shaping Urban Commons, an interactive game that we developed for citizens living in St. Louis, as well as visitors coming to the city. And with St. Louis as our frame of reference.
So, based on a fake article we put together pretending Elon Musk is bringing the world’s largest waste incinerator to St. Louis, the teams explored possibilities of what could unfold through such a scenario of Elon Musk’s proposal.
And the game ended with a great discussion towards roles of engagement and the future of community in our cities today.
Another game I developed, that also speaks to how we engage in and with the world today is reflected in this game called Connect game.
I initiated as a first awareness of how people relate to the land we currently inhabit, as well as how we engage with our environment. The game situated in the hypothetical settlement, and imagined like a allotment garden and explores relationships between human and non-Human agencies form an alternative ways of cohabitation.
And while I also develop play in games, I also employ play in my drawings. A form of play that celebrates in imagination towards the deployment of a visual language, I unfold through digital and analog realm.
Under this umbrella, several drawings have emerged from which I would like to share today, two projects I generated within the last three years.
The first one titled Confronting Urbanization, which was exhibited at the Vens Biana 2021, investigates processes of urbanization towards alternative forms of living.
And I won’t be able to discuss the drawing today in depth here, but I would like to highlight a moment in the drawing where I start to investigate different forms of living but bringing forward how we as citizens actually have become more and less disengaged from our local context. And to the disappearance of a larger cohesive collective framework that we’re actually all kind of facing today.
So, which actually brings me to my next drawing, which was exhibited at the last year’s Venice Biannale.
And in this drawing, I explore how we continue to produce and expose ourselves to these geographies of disconnection and economic extractions in which we have actually forgotten to collectively really come together to address actually these pressing issues.
Which brings me actually to my last project I would like to share with you today, and then this project revolves around citizen engagement and what role we as urban citizens might be willing to take on towards the creating of a common ground of care and stewardship.
The project Got Umbrella? The name of the performance resembles the translation of a 2D version of the Noli Map into a 3D interactive realm, through which I studied modes of land ownership, stewardship, and other forms of engagement and the resulting inequalities invigorating by the urban grid.
So based on these parameters, Got Umbrella? envisions a world in which people again take on the role as engaged citizens. Citizens that actually act as public figures to enact care and stewardship for the world they inhabit.
And by playing various roles and wearing various masks, every participant in the performance reconfigures the condition of which they live and interact in to form a common ground. A common ground that is informed by a field of changing relations that allow for opposition and difference to generate in an environment of many different constellations that consists not just of one world, but of many different worlds that embrace equality and difference through opposition for all.
Thank you.
JN: Thank you, Petra. Incredible work. It’s great to see it.
We’d like to now announce our next winner. The next category is the Kevin Sloan Award for Best Travel Sketch.
And the winner of this category is Hugo Barros Costa from Universita Polytechnica de Valencia.
Congratulations, Hugo.
Petra, I know you had a lot to talk about this, specifically with your interest in urbanism and the activity of a city. So tell us, tell us more about this drawing.
PK: Yeah, thank you, Josh. And first of all, also congratulations, Hugo for this great sketch.
And indeed the jury was really in love with your depiction.
And so, I would like to give a little commentary on that and what we also all discussed while in jury.
So, one was immediately drawn to this scene depicted, drawn by you and displaying the residue of life as an atmosphere unfolding.
And I couldn’t help to begin imagining what was going on behind these windows and the closed doors and the curtains, and the surreal moment of calmness that you have depicted here.
While at the same time, the messiness of urban life was actually also perfectly and beautifully depicted.
And with this little exception of that little red dot, and actually all of us were wondering about it. And the do not enter sign that was really drawn into the center of the drawing.
And I couldn’t help wondering what this was all about, that there was this, do not enter sketch depicted in red.
So anyway, conation, this is a beautiful sketch, and it was all loved by us. So, congratulations.
JN: Yeah, it’s, it’s incredible. It’s really beautiful. I mean, the idea of perspective is to show what happens in depth.
And Petra, you do such a good job talking about the way that this plays with depth, what’s going on in the depth of those windows?
How is there this restriction that you’re not supposed to go down this street?
How do, how does the messy and the calm balance, like, there’s so much to this drawing, and it’s so beautifully constructed.
Congratulations, Hugo. Thank you for, for this entry.
The next category is the Award for Excellence in Digital Hybrid Media by a Professional.
And the winners of this category are Morgan Kerber and Yushan Jiang from SHoP Architects.
Petra, tell us a little bit about this drawing specifically.
PK: Yeah, So congratulations to you two.
I think this is a very tiny depiction of the urban world we currently live in. And in terms of how we could imagine different forms of interaction in an inner block and its surrounding streetscapes.
So, one was immediately reminded of different modes of ownership and how they could actually unfold in an urban setting today.
And sure enough, reading the description of the drawing speaks to the topic of community and ownership, and how a bottom-up scenario could actually unfold in the city.
So, the use of technique that you used for this collage is, I think, so suitable. Because as, as it speaks not only just to this one world as it was just speaking in my presentation, but it really embraces sort of this different worlds, that we all kind of embrace today, where actually diversity is unfolding and where this is not only this one perception of something, but there are so many different ways of how one could look at something and unfold it and celebrate it actually from the bottom up.
So, this is really a great depiction of how we, in an urban environment, can actually really live together in a very different way through the technique of the collage.
So, congratulations to you two for this beautiful depiction.
JN: Yeah, I couldn’t think of a better drawing for you to talk about Petra with your interest in urbanism, that kind of intensity, the collage, even the aerial perspective of this drawing is just so well done. But most specifically the way that it asks questions about urban life and ownership, right?
This idea of what ownership is as you’re drawing the collective and this beautiful three-part arrangement, it’s really, really a remarkable drawing.
Congratulations to the winners.
Well, that is our eight categories, and if you’re familiar with the competition, there are a series of categories and there’s a winner for each of those categories. And we want to stop and congratulate all the winners of those, those categories in your tremendous work.
Beyond those eight categories, each juror has the opportunity as well to offer a citation to a piece that they want to recognize in addition to the eight category winners.
So, we want to take a moment and actually go through these four and talk about them a little bit, because these are really remarkable works as well.
Every year we arrive at this point where we’re awarding, you know, somewhere around 11 or 12 projects, and we’re looking at a list of like dozens and dozens of drawings wishing that we could give awards to all of this remarkable work.
So, as we venture into these last four, I want to stop and just say congratulations and thank you to everybody who entered your remarkable work and your hard work and intelligence into this.
It’s really inspiring to see your work.
The first juror citation that we’re going to talk about is Samuel Ringman’s Juror Citation.
And this, this citation is awarded to Wud Aldulaimy from the University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Sam, I know you had a lot to talk about with this one, even in the way that it contrasts with some of the ways that you work personally. Tell us what you love about this drawing.
SR: So, being the old fashioned, hand rendering, cranky old guy in the in the group, it’s surprising that my jurors prize would go to a digital piece.
But I found this image of a floating city to be ambitious and, and intriguing. Also as a juror for a rendering competition, I don’t feel I have to fully understand an image at first glance, but I do have to be interested enough to for it. And that’s what’s happening here.
There’s no official title given, but the artist refers to The Cloud Opulus, so that’s what I’m going to call it.
I see The Cloud Opulus as an exploration of what is possible through the use of a digital tools, a type of world building exercise that presumably addresses certain urban planning problems with a technological solution. Though some of the details of the rendering and certain elements raise questions for me.
I can’t help but compare this to the mega structures and Arcadian projects of the sixties and seventies by Archigram and Super Studio, you know walking cities and such which were either technologically utopian or dystopian, depending on your point of view. It raises more questions than answers, but even if it were all nonsense it still pulls you in.
Either way, it’s about thinking about the future. Its the type project that almost certainly wouldn’t work, but it still can still be informative and enlightening.
So, I say good work Wud, congratulations.
JN: Yeah, in really remarkable drawing, it, it really pulls you in, right? It is really incredible.
And Sam mentions the mega structural work of Super Studio and of Archigram. I mean, that’s absolutely present, but also like Iona Friedman, Cedric Price, the Metabolism.
There’s so many ways that drawing was used and built into very strategically to show these kind of intense worlds.
And, I love this drawing. One thing that really stood out to me was the idea of the sky.
You know, and Sam, you mentioned Cloud Opulus with this, but you see the way that the sky almost hangs over it, like this fabric that’s floating above the drawing, but framing and pulling you into that one point perspective. But it’s also underneath the drawing, I just like how it reorients you and kind of suspends you in this frozen moment.
It’s really, really a great drawing. Congratulations to our winner.
The next juror citation that we’d like to announce is Dana’s. Dana Cupkova’s Juror Citation goes to Bea Martin, FHEA, RIBA, and ARB of Speculative Assemblies.
Dana, tell us a little bit about why this one stands out to you.
DC: So, this is a hand drawing, we’re switching roles here with Sam and I. And I can be cranky too, but I wasn’t throughout the whole jury.
So, this is a beautifully constructed hand drawing that is both speculative and operational.
It is not a representational sketch, but kind of through the level of abstraction and spatial translation, it tells a story of destruction on a territorial scale.
There is both empathy and strength in the lines of the drawing that are beautiful, yet showing a level of despair in its detail through the abstraction, across the scale of territory.
The drawing is really reminiscence of Lebbeus Woods, and his scar drawings for radical reconstruction of postwar territory of Sarajevo. Referencing a tragic human condition through the abstraction.
The author titles, the drawing, “The Strip: Geospatial War Lines, Where the Fabric of Reality Stretches and Bends,” which resonates so strongly with our global rifts and realities.
So thank you, Bea, for sharing historical work in this competition.
JN: This drawing just is so powerful to me. I’m infatuated with lines. I just absolutely love lines.
It’s so easy with all of the beautiful renderings that we’ve seen and that we see, to sometimes forget the power that just a simple set of lines and planes can actually have.
And I love the way that the black anchors this drawing in the middle, but in a very complex way that you go to that and then you reach out into this really fine and beautiful line work, multiple types and weights, and it’s really, really remarkable and very powerful.
Congratulations.
he next juror citation that we’d like to announce is Michael Ford’s Juror Citation.
And this citation goes to Ally Rees of Akoaki.
Congratulations, Ally.
I have some of Michael’s comments and notes here that I’d like to share, but also give some of my comments about this.
One thing that stood out to me is the way that the author of this talked about it as “the frenzy of the digital.” I love the idea of “the frenzy of the digital.”
And also in the description it talks about the prevalence of surveillance in our urban life and how that changes the way that we interact with our spaces, maybe even makes us more reticent or more subdued, which is interesting with the nature of this drawing.
You see the intensity of the colors in the urban environment.
You see the depth in this beautiful three-part organization, the layering and the colors that are used.
One thing that stood out to me quite quickly with this was the figural nature of the people.
And you see them here on the screen, these brightly colored peach with the lines across them, you think that they would really jump off the page.
And they’re sneaky, they both pull forward and then immediately dissolve into the drawing, in a very nuanced and incredible way, in my opinion.
And I think that speaks to this idea of surveillance and how it affects us really, really well.
The people are just present, and then they just go away, and all you see is this urban machine and this layered frenzy that’s around it.
It’s just a really, really remarkable drawing. Congratulations, Ally.
Our last juror citation and our last award for the day, is Petra’s Juror Citation.
The winner of Petra’s juror citation is Axel Olson from the University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
And Petra, I love how you get into the product and the representation here. So, please tell us more about this one.
PK: Yes, I would like to congratulate Axel for this drawing or infographic and as it gives the viewer agency to enter the depiction.
And so, by allowing the viewer to choose their own point of entry, into the drawing, this infographic for me generated an instant dialogue with the creator of this depiction and allowed to develop one’s own understanding of what Tyvex, this is the topic of this infographic is made of and used for.
And as each scene displays, a moment of Tyvex is being produced and used as well as applied into the world of making buildings.
I couldn’t help myself wanting to actually understand how and what is behind Tyvex.
So, I started actually looking up what Tyvex is made of and what is behind this application. Axel, I would really like to congratulate you, too.
You got me sucked into this drawing, and I started research on my own about the work that you actually depicting here.
So going back and forth to dive deeper into the world that you have to depicted here.
To me, the drawing that actually critically draws the viewer in, is a practice we all should celebrate again. And particularly in today’s world, where the image is becoming through all these different softwares we have swirling around us, a very important medium to communicate with others in the world and to yourself.
So thank you so much for this, for this iconographic, depiction.
I really love it. And, and I wish I could have a, a copy of it. It’s so beautiful. I really love it.
And I love also the colors that you used, because green is a colr of hope, yet the color that you’ve used is actually almost appalling. One cannot help, it’s like, oh my God, this is a world of crazy, and oil making an extraction, yet there’s hope in this.
So, I really, really love your depiction. So, congratulations to this work.
JN: I absolutely agree about the green, Petra.
Like the green is incredibly powerful, and it speaks to the plasticity of the product, the idea of the wrap, right?
It’s this synthetic color, but in a way, it does such a good job of holding this drawing together.
And I don’t know why I read it this way, but the way that it plays between the white and the black, it seems to me to be almost a commentary on a traditional figure ground drawing, but with a third element pulled in there, and the green becomes ground, but the ground like hits you in the face and you start to read these moments that are sitting on and underneath this idea of ground.
And I’m probably going way beyond what you were saying with this Axel, but it’s really, really a, a terrific drawing and a congratulations on this.
That is our 12 awards.
We want to pause and actually thank everyone for their entries and congratulate our 12 winners.
We we’re going to take a couple of moments here for a Q&A and pull three of our jurors in to talk a little bit more about some of the topics that came up this year, some of the things that they’ve been interested in, and some of the things that we’ve seen pop up in the discussion in the chat online.
We probably won’t get directly to questions in the chat, but we will review these. We thank you for your comments.
We hope that you online have been scrolling through these and seeing each other’s commentaries.
One of the best things about drawing isn’t just the construction of a thing, but it’s the impact of that as it generates discourse and deeper thought and community across it, and helps build our profession beyond just what’s on paper, on a screen.
So, please continue to talk and spread this information with everyone.
I actually want to start Petra, since we just were talking about these drawings with you, maybe let’s go in a little bit of reverse order.
Something that we talked about in deliberations that you and I have talked about over several years, is this idea of medium and message. With all of these drawings, there’s a specific medium, we use medium as categories, right?
But, there’s this link between what you’re trying to say and how you accomplish that. What are some of your thoughts on the link between medium and message? What does it mean for you?
PK: Yeah, you know, by looking through all these entries, I think there was a tremendous amount of critical engagement in the drawings or in the depiction that were displayed.
And I think this is also something to do in the world we’re living in right now, where critical thought and critical contributions towards drawing is again, really, really coming to the forefront and special. Especially the drawings.
And I want to pick two of the drawings that I was in particular drawn to here in the competition.
And one of them was the collage / depiction, by the two people who work for SHoP Architects, who actually use a very traditional depiction of the collage or a medium of the collage to actually pull together a new world.
And for me, that critical depiction of how they’re using that an axonometric drawing as a frontage, while using collage as a traditional way of putting something together, is for me an incredible moment of how old and new actually comes together.
And I think also in the world, like we’re living in today with Mid Journey where depictions are being put together through a algorithms, I think the image is becoming, again, more and more, and probably Dana can talk more about these worlds where, where these things are becoming really important of how we are conveying our message towards the world and who we actually are engaging with our drawings.
And I think the depiction here right in front of us is, to me, that speaks to everybody in the world.
It speaks to children, that speaks to adults, it speaks to elderly, it speaks really to all of us in the world because how it is actually also put together.
And I think also the depiction that I picked for the last category this drawing by Tyvex is also a way of, a very different way of how representational techniques actually are used to draw us into, in a critical way.
And I think the author in that depiction really…I couldn’t help myself, how there were so many different ways of how one could enter his drawing.
And to me, that also gives me agency, again, as a participant. And for many, many years me as an agent, were no longer important. But now it seems like this idea of agency really comes back and how we are engaging in actively participating, in engaging in a drawing in front of us.
JN: I love that. I love that idea that agency is important and involved in this, as we try to communicate certain things and we use the tools of our profession and of our interest to do that. That we’re using that agency to kind of bring things to the forefront or examine them.
And sometimes it’s for presentation, or representation, and sometimes it’s just for us. Because we need to figure it out. We need to work through it.
And different mediums allow us to do that in different ways.
Sam or Dana, do you have any thoughts that you’d like to add on this?
SR: Okay. Well, I was… the subject came up the other day about, for things and such.
So, I yesterday went back through the entire 290 images that we had. And frankly, my head still hurts because there’s was so much to process.
But one thing that stood out me was the vast range of media and techniques that are available today, with the digital tools of course. But there were pieces that were wood cuts and there were mono prints and photo collages and, in addition to your standard watercolors and pencil drawings, and ink and all.
So, It’s, you know, there was just so much. And it was hard to pick which were the best.
I don’t know. I’m starting to trail here, So I’ll hand it off to off to Dana.
DC: Thank you Sam.
It’s interesting because I think that both of you talk about this relationship between technology, technique, agency, and process.
And, to me those are both, could be digital and could be analog.
What I’m most interested in is how some of these technological tools really engage what we make and how we make, how it changes our way of thinking.
And what I’ve been seeing in through all these submissions, which is really exciting, is that it’s less about the specificity of a tool and it’s more about the intent.
What is the intent of kind of our human agency and how the tools, whether they’re analog or digital, become a kind of a proxy to the impact that we’re trying to make.
And, that includes the AI, that includes some of the more technologically informed processes.
Because I think there is a kind of a moment, and Petra you talked about the kind of a level of criticality that we have that with understanding these processes. I think we have a space to really reintroduce the human agency in a much more radical way.
And to me, a lot of these drawings are really starting to talk about a sort of a level of freedom and set of values that we as an architect and profession need to reinstate in creating the world that we want to live in for humans and beyond humans in a context of all the possible crises that we are dealing with.
And how both, from visioning and representing these future worlds, to our ability to use these drawing processes to make them and understand what our impact is, has been a really wonderful way to kind of think theoretically through the drawing and the agency of the drawing in this process.
And that’s been a lot of what our conversations within a jury have been. And that’s been incredibly illuminating and exciting.
JN: Yeah. I love the optimism of that, Dana. I think that’s really incredible that this is our opportunity to examine our intent. Drawing is the way that we work through our thoughts to find out, not only will they sell a project, right, but, will they help us develop an idea that could actually have impact?
How do we refine our voice?
And, the word intent is just absolutely wonderful.
This actually reminds me of something else that we were talking about with this idea that drawing has changed over time.
We’re looking at 50 years of a competition, right?
Where we mentioned that the initial drawings were hand-drawn only, delivered in person.
And over the years, we’ve added categories, change categories, kind of adapted as we go along.
And I think we always want to think about or ask what’s, what’s next? What is the kind of trajectory of drawing? What’s the future role of drawing or representation?
What do you think, Dana, what are your thoughts on that?
DC: Well, I think just picking up on some of the previous points, I think that there’s going to be a kind of a shorter pathway between drawing and making in some way.
I think that the kind of a reality of a drawing as a process, and I don’t mean just in terms of prototyping or making objects and making. I mean it all through this kind of idea of landscape cities, urban spaces, and so on.
I think that the kind of our imagination, in some way, through the future of the drawing and through some of the technology that’s coming in, whether that’s AI, VR, AR, enables us to put a human in the center of the draw agency of the drawing.
But also what it enables, and what’s been really evident from a lot of the drawings that we looked at, is to include the multiple points of view into the drawings.
And this one been really representational through some of the drawings that we picked and some of them that I have picked that it’s not about kind of a single point perspective or a double point perspective or just axonometric, but it’s really ability of drawing the relationship across the scale.
So, from the large territorial drawings to the creation of the objects that in some way, our ability to understand, through the drawing and through the communication – the drawing as a communication – not just a singular vision, but as a vision of a multitude or a collective or multiple voices is something that is part of a conversation.
It’s not just kind a single gesture of the single human, but it’s really part of the way we collectively live in the world.
And I think that the, a lot of what the technology enables is essentially forefronting or ability for forefronting the human agency. And it’s more of an issue of a value system, then it’s an issue of which technology one uses and whether one uses hand or whether one uses computer.
JN: Yeah. That’s beautifully put. Thank you.
I find myself in my class all the time talking about the duality of representation.
That we’re representing something as we draw it, but that we are representatives of people, like our professional trade is the drawing and the communication of futures.
And we need to take that very seriously and understand that we have a responsibility to represent more people than just ourselves.
And there’s this idea of collective and community and agency and intent that you’re talking about that I think is really powerful in our role as designers and our responsibility for what we do for communities.
There’s something you said like really kind of stuck in my ear.
It’s almost as if the technologies of professional efficiency allow us to do the drawings we have to do to persist as professionals more efficiently so that we can spend more time thinking about the deeper impacts of our field. And we can spend more time not just doing more drawings, but actually adding meaning to those drawings and helping make sure that that has impact.
Maybe I’m putting words in your mouth but, I was really inspired by the way that you talked about that.
DC: No, I think that’s part of it, but, I think Petra can talk about more about the issue of kind of a collective drawing.
And I know Sam has such an incredible way of thinking, the idea of kind of identity through to hand and to me, I think all of that is part of the kind of a critical process of conceiving architecture.
I do think, that this idea of a kind of an efficiency and we think about the creation of a drawing as an ideation and then going into the construction as a kind of a delivery of the drawings.
I think that even in that phase, especially now with looking at different ways of constructing through different forms of automation, there are ways when one can enter the human agency into the process in a more radical way, right?
Which is really showing through like how certain production of details can have much more nuance or varied expression.
So not everything is automated, no. Everything has this expression of automation.
So, I do think, I do agree with you, Josh, but I just don’t think it separates the process between the ideation and construction.
I think it’s kind of layered into the whole process from conceiving to making.
JN: Yeah. That’s great. I appreciate that. Petra, do you have anything you’d like to add about this idea of communal drawing and what that means?
PK: Yeah, Dana, you said a word called imagination.
And I think that is such a key word in this whole process, because imagination actually allows you to be an agent and to apply agency because I found these technical ways of how drawings can be done today.
You could be everywhere in the world and start drawing, which I’m actually doing with my students together.
We’re drawing from all different parts of the world.
We’re sitting on the computer and drawing together while we are somewhere else sitting in a place in the world. And to me these drawings all of a sudden become alive.
And I am as a professor, no longer anything else other than the contributor or participant in the process. And I love that because it equalizes us all.
And for me, this is so important in that process, how technology actually allows you to do that.
We’re all equals and we’re all contributing to it at the same time.
And I’m no longer the person who’s giving the task here, because the students actually are at the same time contributing as I am.
So, we’re all equal on that, and I love that.
And that also allows us to create imaginary worlds that we haven’t even thought about.
And for me, this is actually an incredible moment to draw.
So, I keep drawing with my students. So, for me, that word imagination and agency are super important words that we are engaged in today, especially in academia.
JN: Absolutely. Thank you.
Sam, in your work, you mentioned this as you were talking about, and forgive, correct me if I say this inaccurately, but you almost draw like for yourself at times, and then you draw in direct response to kind of answer something or fill a role.
So, for you, how does this idea of change or time or future, how does it impact the way that you think about what you work and how you actually deal with clients?
Or how, when you draw for yourself, what’s the kind of difference there?
SR: Well, I mean, clients have, you know, very specific parameters.
We need a street level view, and we need to see this and that.
And, it’s all pretty straightforward. It’s after you’ve drawn enough branch banks on pad sites on your suburban corners, and you start to go nuts.
So yeah, I go in the meantime thinking about all my own stuff and the more imaginative of the better, usually sometimes exercises and in forms, sometimes exercises and content ideation, kind of all over the place.
As we saw with my examples, I tend to go with what I call “fun stuff.”
You know, I tend to be a pretty facetious person, so I’m constantly making fun of fun of the world.
That’s my approach to that.
So, it’s when I don’t have client driven projects, which is more so the case these days, because I’m competing with every student that just got out of school and knows how to use a use SketchUp, that I’m not needing it as much anymore.
So, I’ve had more time to do my own thing, which works out just fine for me.
Did I answer the question or..
JN: No, That was, that was terrific. I also unfairly asked you about seven questions all packed into one, so thank you.
Thank you for that.
SR: Thing I can add to that is, that is I do keep sketchbooks. And my sketchbooks are probably more idea books with concepts drawn up in the, as opposed to you know, plein air sit on the corner and record the building across the street type sketchbooks.
In fact, I very rarely enter the travel sketch category because I really don’t have that much material.
Or, if I do have that material, it’s because I don’t sit on the corner, I record something with a camera and then take it to the studio and then usually reinterpret it.
But sketchbooks are what it’s all about. Keep sketchbooks, you know, record the ideas.
I’ve got dozens and dozens of them. Sometimes, when I go back I don’t even understand what I put in them. But it’s all there, at least at the moment it meant something.
So, maybe that leads to something else down the road.
JN: Yeah. No, that’s great.
One thing that I really appreciate is, for each of your perspectives starts to talk about the different roles of drawing. It’s not just medium, there’s specific roles and ways that you handle it differently.
And to me, that’s really powerful why this is so crucial for us as a discipline, but us as people.
And Sam, you talked about your experience in the way that you work.
Do you have any advice that you would like to share to young designers that are setting out and figuring out how they draw and why it’s important?
SR: Well, there’s a billion reasons to draw, usually to understand, sometimes to record. It’s, you know, all the above as far as that goes.
As far as doing drawings for rendering competitions, that’s usually a whole different it’s a whole different thing.
Because now you’re drawing, you’re doing a drawing that has to communicate to three or four total strangers one day, as part of a jury.
In which case, as far as the advice I’d have for that is, or advice to people who’ve entered the competition and their piece wasn’t chosen, it’s like, well, don’t be discouraged because it probably almost got chosen.
Or if it didn’t get chosen by this jury, might get chosen by another jury, or be chosen by the same jury if they had just met a different day.
Sometimes it’s apples and oranges, apples one day, and orange the next.
So, if you really believe in a piece, continue to enter it.
One secret I have to getting into most competitions that I enter is that, because as we saw from my slideshow earlier is I have a whole I work in a whole range of median techniques, and I usually enter a whole variety of pieces.
And usually something will click with a jury. So that’s my secret to that.
But, advice as far as competitions are concerned is just keep entering, just keep plugging away. And if you really, really believe in a piece continue to enter that.
JN: Yeah. Thank you. That’s great advice. Dana or Petra, do you have any advice that you’d like to share or any thoughts?
DC: Well, I don’t know if this is an advice, but just to follow up on Sam’s suggestion, I think that even now, it was really difficult to choose even the shortlist.
I mean, there was such an incredible variety of drawings and the averaging within the kind of the jury that we had, and Michael’s not here right now, but he was a strong voice in selection of the shortlist as well.
There were almost double of the entries that were considered for the short list.
And we have to come to the conclusion, which was really dramatic and unfair because a lot of drawings were incredible, many more than are on a short list.
And the ones that are on a short list are absolutely fantastic.
So, this idea about how one perceives one’s own successes or failures relative to their own work, it’s much more about development of one’s agenda rather than thinking necessarily about what does it take to that specific jury to pick my entry.
I do believe that in some way, moving forward, anything we do within drawing, within practice, within architecture, one has to find their own agency.
Their own way of seeing the world, their own way of reporting the world, and responding to what is important and in front of us in a way that it makes sense.
And I think that is in some way more important than trying to tailor something to the specific delivery towards an award. And to me, that’s been a huge lesson from this competition. Because, as the competition rules tell us we have to pick certain number of entries, that was the most difficult part of the conversation.
JN: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Beautifully said.
DC: So that was a non-advice, advice. That wasn’t very useful advice.
JN: It was terrific. Thank you.
PK: Yeah, Dana, I agree with you. I think one has to work on its own agenda and its own agency and its own language.
And I think that’s a part of world-making that you do.
And we, as architects, we do draw, that’s our language that we use to convey our ideas and to communicate to the world and also communicate to ourselves when we’re figuring something out.
And I think it is absolutely important to have your own agenda in that process, and what you want to discover, and what kind of language you want to use in order to communicate that to the world.
And a competition like that is almost not even important. It doesn’t matter because it all is a matter of what you as a person want to communicate to this world and want to figure out.
And I agree with Dana. I think it was really, the contributions were incredible.
And there were so many amazing drawings, and I had a really hard time to figure out which one to pick.
We had vivid conversations about which one and which not.
It’s really, in that regard, it almost doesn’t matter.
All the work that was presented is so incredible and so beautifully put together by the authors contributing to this competition.
So, I think the richness of all these worlds that all of you shared with us, I thought it was incredible. I really am thankful for that to be actually part of that and to look at all these drawings. So, it was incredible.
JN: Yeah, that’s, thank you for that. And I couldn’t find a better place, a better sentiment to end off on.
I thank you all for your beautiful words and for your hard work. And Petra, Dana, Sam, Michael, I learned so much from you.
It’s been quite an honor to be a fly on the wall this year and to learn about the competition.
I want to just thank everybody involved, and specifically thank everybody that is drawing and entering. Your hard work, is valued and we are inspired by it. Keep drawing. Thank you.
SC: And don’t forget, all of the finalists and winners will be on display at the AD EX starting next week.
TP: And that’s right. And then on July 25th, we’ll have our live in person exhibit at the AD EX. So please come on by.
We also want to say thank you to all of you that are viewing.
Thank you for making this happen and being tuned in and seeing the winners.
Thank you for all of the entrants.
I got in and came in, and congratulations to the winners.
And with that being said, we’d like to end it and see you soon.
Thanks.