When in Rome, Venice, Paris and More!: The Sketchbook

As my term in Rome winds down, and I complete all of my assignments, I have an overwhelming urge to share one of them.Throughout the term, we were required to go out into the city everyday and complete a sketch studying some aspect of the architecture if Rome. When finished, we had to reflect on the role of the sketchbook for the architect. So here are some of my favourite sketches, and my reflection on the assignment.

The Role of the Sketchbook for the Architect

For the architect, the sketchbook is their greatest tool. It is an expansion of the mind, an extension of the hand and a canvas for the imagination. The sketchbook offers within it an endless amount of possibilities with each new blank page. Within the mind, an architect can have a limitless number of ideas, all of which only make sense to themselves until written down. The hand is the architects’ communication tool. From the mind flow the ideas through the hand and into the sketchbook. These sketches allow those exterior to the brain of the architect a temporary glimpse behind the veil of a complicated mind.

Ruin of the Roman Forum

Shadow Study of the Leaning Tower of Pisa

Ruins in Baia

In first year, a wise professor told us that the most wonderful ideas can form inside the minds of students, and try as we may to explain them with words, only a sketch can truly explain our ideas to other. There is no greater tool than a sketch for communicating what words cannot suffice in explaining. That same professor told us that if you cannot sketch it, you cannot design it. The sketch is the simplest means of deriving the feasible from the impossible. If you can sketch it, you can design it, and it can be built.

Roman Arches

The Trajan Markets

The Pantheon

Details of Vicenza

Since learning this, I have never found more comfort in anything than I have in a blank page and a pen, as these tools allow me to communicate my design ideas. Although I have never been the greatest artist, even in my own slightly cartoon-like manner, I have learned to communicate the wondrous world of built form inside my mind through a sketchbook. The sketchbook has become an extension of my creativity and a means of communicating. It has also become a tool of studying and understanding.

Ponte Rialto

Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome

Cityscape of Rome

As an architect, and even more so as a student, understanding the work of others is just as important as communicating your own work. The ability to strip down a piece of architecture into lines and figures, slowly dissecting it with the simplest strokes of a pen, is a skill that must be practiced and constantly engaged. This skill allows one to slowly involve their mind in comprehending each aspect of a building, and through this, be able to apply the ideas studied in future projects.

Piazza Navona

Details of Piranesi's Church

Bells of Richard Meier's Jubilee Church

The Keyhole at the Priory of Malta

St. Peter's from the Janiculum

Throughout my term in Rome I have used my sketchbook as a tool of studying the city. I observed piazzas for their ability to organize the urban landscape and nature as a means of framing the built form. I have also observed the particular way in which light travels across the façade of a building and blankets the ground around it. And I have wandered for hours, trying to find the perfect example of a seashell in the architecture of baroque Rome. The sketchbook engages the architect. It causes them to observe details that might be missed by the ordinary passerby. It makes the architect stop for a moment and really look at the world around them. The sketchbook, as an expansion of the mind, extension of the hand, and canvas for the imagination, trains the architect to see.