By Cristobal Correa and John Sloane
More than just ubiquitous, digital tools for designers have become an integral part of the building process from concept to construction and every step in between. Yet, the simple act of drawing or sketching by hand remains one of the most powerful tools of the trade. Freehand sketching is certainly an outlet for creative expression, but it also allows for quick iteration of design options to accelerate problem-solving and, perhaps most importantly, provides a critical tool for facilitating effective communication. It’s informal by nature, which adds a sense of malleability to new ideas, freeing the design team to explore a wide range of options. Hand drawing has the potential to bridge the gaps between architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals and their clients, between engineers and architects, and between design teams and building trades.
Once considered to be an essential skill for any designer, the application of drawing as part of process has decreased and been replaced too often by digital design software. For some, hand drawing can be intimidating. However, even the crudest sketches can convey complex details; the process can be liberating.
A fresh sheet of paper represents infinite design possibilities, and mistakes can be simply crossed out as the designer or engineer tries again, right there on the same sheet. Drawing on blank paper provides clarity of mind that assists with identifying important ideas and helps achieve a laser-focus on the problem at hand. Then the designer can break down each specific challenge into a group of manageable parts. Drawing inspires lateral thinking, and simultaneous exploration of a range of solutions.
Of course, paper is optional. Sketching by hand is often just as valuable when performed with a stylus and tablet as with pencil and paper—software like Sketchbook offers a level of freedom similar to paper. It’s important to recognize, though, that utilizing a drawing function in a suite like Rhino or Sketchup places unintentional limits on that freedom: the emphasis on data and measurement starts engaging filters and inserting artificial restrictions into the creative process, and the digital environment may be filled with noise, bombarding the designer with images and icons. However, digital tools have one key advantage over paper: they allow a team to communicate ideas and collaborate through the use of freehand drawing in the virtual space.
The process of drawing and iterating together with our project partners has led to some of Buro Happold’s greatest design successes and technical innovations. Notably, our structural engineers employed this approach while working with Safdie Architects to conceive and develop Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport, with its gridshell concept for a five-story-high, toroid-shaped glass enclosure spanning 200 meters (~656 ft) with an indoor waterfall at the center of its nearly column-free interior. Collaboration with Safdie’s designers included working together, trading the same piece of paper back and forth to advance concepts through multiple iterations.
Sketching together on a digital platform is valuable, too, and has become a common practice for savvy teams of lighting designers and engineers, whether working internally or with project partners. Digital sketching is intertwined with the lighting design process at our firm. Given the varying level of detail in the design process, specific types of software suites or applications are optimal depending on the location in the design process:
Early on, the basic properties of a concept can be fleshed out and advanced through the simplest tools that are included with meeting platforms like Miro or Zoom.
At the middle-level of complexity, the additional functionality found in the graphic design tools in applications like PowerPoint or Bluebeam adequately support a team’s ability to communicate and move a design through iterations toward a unified idea of massing or general form.
For presentation-quality output, Photoshop and similarly robust suites allow teams to apply gradient control, contrast of light, varying apertures, simulation of daylight, and other ways to create detail and differentiation.
Most, if not all, of the best design processes for lighting work start out with sketching. Much like a painter adds layers to create shadow, depth, and contrast, lighting designers apply light in a similar way. In person, teams work together on paper to generate initial ideas of how and where to apply the light. As they bring in more team members, they turn to PowerPoint—or Zoom, if meeting virtually—for sketching over drawings on paper, transferring the process in this step to primarily digital tools and platforms. Whether digital or on paper, drawing does not replace other critical communication skills, but rather enhances them—where words may fail, the sketch gets the idea across. In this way, it is a critical, practical tool for effective collaboration, rallying the project team around innovating and problem-solving that leads to highly sustainable and visually impactful illumination schemes.
Although the methods of sketching vary from firm to firm, the mission is the same: to visually communicate the quality, contrast, and hierarchy of light. Many of us learned from our mentors early in our careers to use trace paper with a red colored pencil for lighting sketches—the red pencil representing the intensity of illumination. The paper drawing is then scanned and edited to read in yellow or gold as a Photoshop overlay. While this was a more important part of the lighting design process in the days before tablet and stylus, it remains an integral aspect of our process today.
Many times, we find ourselves in positions where we need to immediately react to changes to architecture, detailing, or materiality. Sketching in real-time allows us to move at the same pace as our fellow collaborators, reinforcing the partnership with architects and consultants by responding quickly to new ideas emerging in brainstorming sessions. Establishing a common visual language opens the door to a design process filled with fresh concepts generated at a rapid pace.
One example, the African Americal Memorial at Bates M. Allen Park, is a large-scale public project currently under construction in Fort Bend County, TX, that offers a window into how freehand sketching enhances a process when working with architects, landscape architects, and other collaborators. Our firm was tasked with lighting design for a new exterior public space of reverence and celebration as an acknowledgment of tragic events throughout African American history. The 14-acre memorial site at Bates M. Allen Park preserves two existing historic African burial sites and creates a network of trails connecting them to each other as well as to a new three-story memorial, reflecting pond, and planned future community center. Another memorial conceived for the site commemorates the Sugar Land 95, a group of African American individuals whose remains were recently unearthed in a neighboring community, believed to have been prison inmates and subjects of an unjust convict-leasing scheme.
The architectural lighting team collaborated with design architect Daimian Hines, who has described his firm’s mission as “committed to reparative justice in the global built environment.” Early conceptual design meetings, which included project architect Nico Stearley and project manager Gregory Lake, led to discussions of reclaiming fire—a historic tool of terror and racial violence—as a light source, inspiring our earliest concepts in which we deconstructed the components of fire as a gathering source. We were able to diagrammatically identify the central glowing ember, surrounded by a warm, radiant spill of light. These elements became the basis for our initial design presentation to Hines Architecture + Design and the full client group and project team. The hand-drawn graphics (pictured) apply this concept of a center, glowing ember surrounded by a soft glow of light at the Convict Labor and Leasing Memorial. As we moved to more-detailed design, the sketches of benches across the site helped us to understand the relationship of light to the human scale and experience. The hand-drawn elements helped us communicate clearly, bringing design ideas across to all team members and stakeholders.
Freehand sketching adds so much to the process. In addition to speed, drawing often communicates more quickly and effectively than describing with words—it facilitates the working relationship with collaborators by emphasizing the flexibility of the iterative process. Diagrams from drafting or rendering tools produce straight lines and focused geometry, making designs feel rigid and set in stone, as if it is finalized. Sharing drawings and sketches avoid these obstacles to a free-flowing collaboration, establishing freehand as a pragmatic tool that drives problem-solving and innovation. Embracing the flexibility and freedom of drawing by hand brings lighting designers, architects, and engineers together to shape the client’s vision, ultimately leading to one-of-a-kind, beautiful spaces.
the Authors | Cristobal Correa, P.E., is a principal in Buro Happold’s New York City office as well as the director of technology and a professor at the Pratt Institute School of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design.
John Sloane is a senior lighting designer in Buro Happold’s New York City office. Passionate about light, space, equity, and community-led design, he is experienced with execution of lighting design schemes from concept to construction.