Use Traditional Architectural Rendering By Hand To Present Your Concept Designs in Human Terms

There is no better way to differentiate your architecture firm or product design firm from your competition than to use traditional architectural rendering by hand--including pencil sketches, pen and ink sketches and watercolor sketches--to connect your client'e emotions with your conceptual design. Digital architectural rendering has its place and no architectural or product design presentation can be complete without it, but if everyone is showing the same digital architectural rendering, than it will be the designer that uses traditional architectural rendering to connect her clients' emotions to her ideas that will cut through the noise of what everyone else is doing and make the sale.

James Akers deploys traditional architectural rendering techniques to help sell his clients' conceptual architectural designs to their world famous clients, whether those clients specialize in sports design, hospitality design, entertainment design or institutional design.

Part II: When Architectural Renderers Are Also Architects, Architecture Clients Study Options More Cost-Efficiently

In Part One below, we saw the beginning of an architectural idea: stackable, pre-fab units that come together in a way that animates building and neighborhood. The series of images below follows the thread of that design through to the final black-and-white digital renderings.

Bitt, you may be asking yourself why an architect who does traditional pencil and watercolor architectural rendering would present final images of his own design in a black-and-white digital style-especially given that architect's thoughts on the shortcomings of digital rendering. In this case we were looking for a dispassionate style which combined the strengths of digital modeling (real-time navigation as we pitched the project to the Planning Board) with the charms of the pencil sketch.

Anyone else find ways to combine digital rendering and traditional rendering tools to save time and money in the architectural rendering process? Stew? Chip? Dale? Mark? Tom? Bill? Vic? Leave your comments, lads. As always, click on images to enjoy detail.

When Architectural Renderers Are Also Architects, Architecture Clients Study Options More Cost-Efficiently

Alan C. is a developer and very smart guy. Why? (OK, I'm biased.) Because he called me out of the blue in 2005 and said something to the effect of "Hey, I have this site and I want to study the as-of-right possibilities. I see from your site you are also a registered architect. If I show you plans and sections of a building I have in mind, will you design the exterior, make the presentation drawings and help me pitch the concept to the powers that be?"

As it happens, I had had something similar in mind for a long time. Why not approach developers directly explaining that as an architect with a gift for presentation, I could help them study their options (not claiming to offer final services, mind you) more quickly and efficiently than engaging a "high profile" architect who--given the exigencies of running a large practice--would just assign the exercise to a couple of talented in-house designers anyway, slowing the whole thing down and making it cost 2 to 5 times my fee?

So I said yes, and we began the collaboration pictured below. We used a combination of traditional and digital architectural rendering techniques to explore directions, culminating in the simple black-and-white digital renderings at the end. I'm going to leave out the commentary and just make this a visual journey for now, but suffice it to say that the economic meltdown of 2008 froze the banking system and took down the project. Unless something has happened, I am confident Alan C. and his gorgeous wife S. are passing the time cooking, drinking red wine, dabbling with a little spleef from time to time, and listening to a whole lot of Bob Dylan. He's gonna rise again, trust me.

Early study based on SketchUp massing study (below)

Idea of pre-fab, stackable units enters in:

Note that project sits on top of parking...always a challenge:

Detour into another idea...

Back to a funkier rhythm:

See Part 2 above.

Architectural Rendering Process

I love the process part of making an architectural rendering in watercolor. (See more examples here.) Frankly it isn't that different from the process of making a digital rendering. It's still--and always will be--about emotion and storytelling. Great right brain stuff (or is it left brain?). But the process itself satisfies the opposite problem-solving part of the brain as well: how do I save my client the most time and money while producing the maximum emotional effect? Sometimes it starts with something as basic as photos taped together and scanned.

This project for Hampton College--one of a series of renderings for a proposed master plan--shows a sensitive scheme by Shepley Bullfinch for the renovation of an existing "background building" along Main Street. As always, click on images to make them (much) bigger.

Enjoy more images like this in the Process section of this website.

How Architectural Rendering By Hand Helped Bryant Park Restaurant Get Approvals For New Lighting Design

When Ark Restaurants, interior designer Nancy Mah and lighting designer Brian Orter needed a change to an existing rendering of Bryant Park Restaurant to reflect a new lighting design, the answer was to modify the rendering of this cultural landmark to show more of the entrance from Bryant Park. Here is the process we used. Click on any image to enlarge.

Original rendering:

This is where we started

Quick photoshop study of proposed patch:

Notes from the client:

Context photos:

Pencil line drawing of patch:

Watercolored patch added to original in photoshop:

Overhead festoon lighting and additional floor lanterns added in photoshop:

Final version with festoon lights raised.

That was fun, wasn't it? According to the designers, the revised rendering was a hit with the Bryant Park commission.

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Ideas For Unemployed Architects, Chapter One: Hot Tub On Wheels

In advance of the hot tub rennaissance sure to happen with the release of the art film "Hot Tub Time Machine," I submit the question: why can't one rent a hot tub on wheels? Can somebody get on that please?

The Architecture Of Desire: Peep Shows, 19th C. Watercolor Technique and Las Vegas

My job can be tedious, but it isn't always a grind (sorry). As every architectural renderer knows, drawing people is more time-consuming than drawing the exterior or interior of a building. People make or break a rendering. When drawn poorly, they tell the world that you (the artist) don't actually know what you're doing, and no amount of watercolor technique can hide that.

Problem is, drawing them well takes time: time to draw the figures in convincing positions; time to dress them; time to "light" them and paint them in a way that Winslow Homer or Sargeant would be proud of. OK, maybe not that last one, but seriously, when you paint in watercolor, your watercolor technique is who you are, and as a thoughtful person putting their work out into the world, you can't pretend you don't know the work of Homer, Sargeant, Prendergast, etc.

Sometimes that investment of time is less tedious than others. For art's sake, I humbly submit "Peep Show," an entertainment/club venue that I was asked to visualize, (populate) and bring alive for a colorful Broadway director turned Las Vegas impresario. (It's like five renderings in one, so I've included vignettes after the overall view. Also: I wish to acknowledge the important contribution of friend and colleague Chad Rush in helping me get this Sistine Chapel of Soft Porn done on time.)

Click on any image to enlarge, er, um...the image.

Here's the overall view above. Details of the people below. And yes, those are naked women crawling on top of the glass-sealed VIP lounge on stage:)

David Rockwell, The 2010 Oscars Set Design, Architectural Rendering & 3D Visualization

Is it me, or was the set design the star of the 2010 Oscars ceremony last night? I couldn't get over the coordination between the elegance and beauty of the set as a whole, and the way the individual pieces--constantly rotating in and out to deliver presenters and video walls--never overpowered the people on stage. If you have any idea how much work that takes, than you are as amazed as I am at how flawlessly coordinated were the sets, the people, the production and the camera angles designed to take advantage of it all. It really was a tour de force.

I can't take any credit for helping with last night's design beyond the work we did last year (see below) when David Rockwell first did the design, and the contribution of some early sketches this year used to establish a rough direction, but a number of people behind the scenes do deseve credit beyond what the public is normally aware of. I don't think it's taking anything away from David Rockwell to say that my friend Barry Richards--David's number one collaborator on sets, and design director of one of David's coolest studios (also doing restaurants, high-end apartments, etc.)--was instrumental in realizing last night's miracle. Here are some sketches for the Oscars and for Broadway musicals that David and Barry have asked me to do over the years. Again, congratulations to both and to Rockwellgroup in general for what I truly believe was a masterpiece of set design and set movement.

Your High School Guidance Counselor Got It Wrong: Why Architects Don't Have To Be Good At Math And Don't Have To Draw Well

One of the worst myths ever perpetrated on high school kids contemplating careers in architecture is that architects have to draw well and be good at math. In 30 years of being an architect, I have yet to see a single architect "need" to know any math beyond simple geometry, and yet the profession as a whole has probably lost tens of thousands of talented kids (especially girls) because of this lazy meme propagated by well-meaning guidance counselors. (Btw, please call me if your kids are thinking about architecture. I genuinely enjoy discussing the pros and cons of being one, especially exploding these myths.)

The same goes for drawing. Yes, architects are supposed to draw well, and many of the greats have always done so, but some of the greatest use nothing more than scribbles to communicate their ideas to workshops of apprentices (think Frank Gehry, Louis Kahn...) and this is as it should be. Why? Because over-drawing--drawing too realistically or too sentimentally--discourages the accidental discoveries vital to the design process and miraculously present in the final work of art. I say "miraculous" because it is nothing short of miraculous when an architect--or painter, or musician, or sculptor--spends hundreds of hours on a work which manages to transcend both its materials and the tedious steps involved in making it. Said another way, there is a kind of magic in every work of art: it's usually impossible to look at it and understand how it was done.

Here is a house I am designing for a best friend who is moving to Big Sur, Caifornia. The site is on the water, and when you're there, all you are conscious of is the sun on your skin, the warmth you feel when the chilly wind stops blowing, and the sound of the Pacific at the western edge of the property.

So why do these design sketches look so "bad" (considering I'm a "renderer")? Because it's not about making pretty drawings at this stage; it's about maximizing the chances that your pen will slip and lead you to a bunch of accidental discoveries that defy logic and keep the end product magic. Realistic drawing skills and math only get in the way of the process. Does an aptitude for drawing and math help? Yes, but not beyond a 7th or 8th grade level, at best.

Architectural Rendering Techniques Your Mother Didn't Tell You About

Chapter 14: The ROKU Box (The first in a series of slightly ireverent posts in which we discover tools to help all of us watercolorists--whether you do architectural renderings or more traditional subjects--stay a little more sane during all those hours in the studio.)

OK, you're a dedicated watercolor artist, you've got your favorite triad, your favorite brushes and paper--all good. But now, you've reached the seventh consecutive hour of NPR today and you need a break. You have Netflix Instant, but you don't want to spill water on your laptop keyboard. Solution? The Roku box. It's the little black box about the size of an old video tape that you've heard about but haven't tried yet, and it's gonna change your world. Roku works with your Netflix Instant queue, but it plugs right into your TV and streams your Netflix Instant selections directly from your wireless bridge or modem to your TV (as another video input similar to a DVD player connection). You turn on your Roku box, select Netflix Instant, and scroll through your awesome selections until one hits the mood (I'm on my fourth consecutive 30 Rock Season 3 episode as we speak.)

http://www.roku.com/

OK, so not every time is right for Roku, but if you're on deadline and you can spare just enough mental bandwidth to pay partial attention to, oh, I don't know: R. Crumb? or Mystery Science Theater 3000? Or My Architect? Or Room With A View? Or any of the other pure awesomeness that is your Netflix Instant queue, then I heartily suggest you make the Roku box part of your palette. Next week: green tea.