SKETCHBOOKS

Written by James Ward

I recently found some old sketchbooks from when I was at university, studying architecture.

This photo-montage was on the front cover of one sketchbook:

We had to design an intervention to be placed in a small courtyard which was accessed through a narrow alleyway. I decided that as the site operated on a number of different scales, there should be something which made you feel like you physically changed size as you interacted with it. As the site was mostly brick and metalwork (gutters, drainpipes etc), I wanted something wooden. Naturally enough, that led me to design a garden shed which had a door at one end which was twice the normal size and narrowed to a second door which was half the normal size. Inside, the shed was filled with blinding neon lights. I liked that project.

Here are some of the drawings from a couple of the other sketchbooks, some of them aren’t very good: