REAL WORLD 2

Everyone understands Transparent Drawing.  At least if someone doesn’t, they have had the great courtesy to not tell me.

A few months ago, I posted Real World Transparent Drawings.  These are drawings that I have used to communicate and explain a design to clients who pay me to wear my Architect hat. Many of my clients are modest in their self proclaimed ability to understand two dimensional drawings.  Many only have confidence once they are able to walk around in a space to see and experience for themselves how a space feels.  Yet to a person, when I show them these transparent images of designs that I am proposing, the drawings seem to be very helpful.  They create enthusiasm.  As I have said before, nobody professes any confusion.

These three drawings were used for a residential addition in Upstate New York.  The clients asked that the addition not be showy or flashy.  This is a house that is on property that the client’s father purchased, so there is a family history.  And given the general economic depression of Upstate New York, they wanted the addition to look like it has been there for a long time.

My point is to demonstrate that even for a conservative and traditional design problem, Transparent Drawing works.  In the above drawing, I was exploring and communicating my ideas for glazing as well as for vertical circulation.  I was able to present to my clients the same drawing that I used to resolve problems. I don’t go back and do presentation Transparent Drawings.  These are true working drawings from start to finish.

I wanted to show you that despite the fact that I love using Transparent Drawing for fanciful flights of design fantasy that start with say Chinese Boats turned on their side, it completely works at the very root of what we do as designers.  It works to solve real world problems for real people.