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.

Experiment in Night Sketching on the Janiculum

The Colosseums of Rome

The Aurelian Wall

Sketch of an Architecture Students Bedroom During Deadline

Via Appia Antica

Well, there you have it, the best of my 90 sketches, and my reflection on how important the sketchbook is for the architect,

Ciao for now!

October in Rome: Part 2

At the end of our brief but amazing course with Rick, we celebrated Thanksgiving as a class. What an undertaking! We ordered 5 large turkeys, and it fell to member of the class who had an oven to cook them (luckily, my roommates and I only have a stove, so we were saved this stress). Everyone else had to bring a side dish. We made mashed potatoes and quinoa salad, both of which were delicious and disappeared before seconds were served! Eating dinner with our whole class (all 60 of us) squeezed into our lecture hall was quite an experience! Nobody could get up unless everyone got up, and no one could sit down until everyone was ready to sit down. It was very amusing.

We also had some lovely entertainment at our dinner. Some of my classmates rediscovered some never before heard scenes from our 2011 play Ilion. At the time, one of the guys writing the play had this incredible dry sense of humor, and could turn any sentence into a punch line, simply with how he delivered it. Although he is no longer in our class, some of the other writers did their best to read the scenes he wrote with the same delivery with which they was intended. The whole spectacle brought back wonderful memories of acting in the play, and the camaraderie it brought us. Not to mention it was so funny, they couldn't even finish reading the scenes, because of the uncontrollable laughter echoing off the walls.

And then, it was time to focus on the next project before the class field trip to the north of Italy. Like the first project, this one was located in the Via dis Fiori Imperiale and Colosseum area of the city. We were tasked with designing a new master plan for the area which proved to be quite a challenge! I've never been very astute at site planning, and really had to work in order to come up with something to present for this project.

I planned to redistribute the site into three different rings, a vehicular traffic ring, a park/green space ring, and a pure pedestrian ring primarily for the tourists. I imagined the park space a being a space of mediation between the city and the tourists. A place where the two worlds of Rome could meet in a relaxing environment. This area was designed on the principles of Socrates "Allegory of the Cave". This story tells us of prisoners who were held in a cave, and shown only the shadows of objects their whole lives. When one prisoner is released and begins to see the objects that once cast the shadows in their entirety, he cannot comprehend what they are. Through exposure he learns that the objects and their shadows are one in the same. I reinterpreted this story into a series of winding paths leading throughout the site, guiding people to the Roman Forum. Throughout the paths there would be small fractions of objects found throughout the Forum dispersed among the paths and trees. These would be the shadows for the visitors. Once in the forum, the people would be able to see these objects still in use on the ancient buildings that remain standing there.

I also designed a preliminary idea of my final project, a Museum of the Fora. I envisioned a building that floats over the site, using light and darkness as a means guiding people through the museum.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the first panel with the hand sketches I did, but I will do when I get them back... If I get them back. I'm not entirely sure if we do or not.

Ciao for now!

September in Rome

Today is November 8. I have been in Italy for 80 days. Today is my father's birthday. I have a scholarship application to complete for my Master's. My current studio project needs a lot of work. And I have decided now is an excellent time to write a long overdue post about September in Rome. 

September is a wonderful season in Italy. It has all the best aspects of Canadian summer, with none of the humidity! From my many walks around the city in the early parts of the term, I ended up with a really nice farmer's tan on my arms and glasses tan on my face! 

Throughout the month of September we had a very interesting project to complete for studio. The class was tasked with designing a thematic pavilion within the area of the Colosseum and Roman forum. I choose to design a "White Box", which meant I was designing a room meant for exhibiting objects. I chose to locate the pavilion right next to one of the entrances to the forum, using the forum itself as the object I was displaying.

I designed an interior pathway, with a series of walls, framing and explaining specific views of the Forum, isolating individual objects so as to give people an understanding of them on their own, before entering the forum and understanding them as a collective.

These are the completed panels for the project:

The experience of creating this project was great, because I got to spend several days exploring the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Capitoline Hill, and Palatine Hill areas of Rome. I gained some amazing insights into the use of historical spaces as tourist destinations, and was given some inspiration for the next project on recreating the strategic plan for the whole area surrounding the Colosseum.

Ciao for now!