Salvador Gilabert Sanz

10 Years of Urban Sketching Imprint

Urban Sketchers movement is non-profit organization, created in 2007, with the goal of encouraging and supporting a global community of people who practice on-site drawing. Many of these sketchers are architects or architecture students who draw on the street in order to improve their representation skills and share drawing technics and supplies. This group is increasing every year, generating a general drawing spread, specific publications and workshops in all the continents. The proposed article aims to understand the reasons for this successful approach on “traditional” drawing on our digital era and how it influenced architects and architecture students to enhance their drawing skills. Is this an isolated movement, or is there a “status quo”, that is claiming drawing traditions?

Enric Miralles, Narration and Creation Through Drawing and Compositions

The drawing for Enric is not only a form of expression, he goes further, he uses the graphic tools for the genesis of his architecture, his work is born from drawing. Being a work so rich in nuances, it needs all kinds of resources, mixing them without any modesty by drawing compositions at various scales and combining with texts. It is not a drawing to teach with coherence and systematization, it is a drawing that in its construction is becoming a project. The evolution in his way of drawing changes over time in the same way as his way of projecting architecture. From the synthetic drawings in conic view to his more mannerist, colorful and expressive ones, starting from Hostalet project to Mollet del Valles or Edinburgh Parlament. The drawings in plan were the main strategy, both, sketches and the plan compositions that configured as a sum of information in the form of overlays. These conceptions are directly related to their way of representing the projects, but at the same time understanding that the main intention of Enric Miralles’ drawings was creation. Thus, although at first glance the compositions of drawings in Enric Miralles’s plant are difficult to understand, but in a concentrated look you can see that they contain all the essential information of the project. These plan drawings are not a mere representation of architecture, but at least at the conceptual level they are architecture in itself.

Doctoral Thesis, “Enric Miralles, the Drawing of the Imagination” Research of Creative Process Through Graphic Expression

The doctoral thesis “Enric Miralles, drawing of imagination” is an example of research with apply both academic and professional levels. Enric Miralles, architect of versatile expression, in which the most important and where the essence of the project is in the process of creation that is not limited to the shape or the facade and where they are never merely an end result. This thesis, analyse these graphic projective strategies and process through drawings, collages, notebooks travel and how to represent projects. A direct application in the academic and professional worlds is done, more specifically in the subject Analysis of Architectural Forms in Architecture at Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Valencia.

Example of a Blog as a Research and Academic Toll About Drawing

The blog a fresh drawing everyday started in a classroom, 5 years ago, when I suggested my students doing a drawing every day. After the general answer “that is impossible”, I proposed uploading a daily drawing in the web, so they could check if it was possible. Since then, I am sketching every day and posting a “fresh” drawing at this blog, alternating them, occasionally, with some old sketches. Starting with black and white sketches, color has instinctively started being protagonist in this illustrated and personal diary that reflects my personal and academic life and the evolution of drawing on it.

Representation of the Construction of the Modernist Movement in Valencia. Series of Photographs by the Sanchís and Desfilis Photographic Studios

Since its inception, photography has been a wonderful ally for architects. The union between the two disciplines has survived until today. Photography has acted either as a disseminator of works by architects, or has used architecture as a backdrop for its reporting. Moreover photography can be considered to be a tool to educate the eye of the architect and refined in a manner that is equivalent to that of drawing.

3D Printing as a Technological Tool Geared Towards Architecture

3D technology marks a major breakthrough in architecture; however, it requires a new approach. 3D printing, regardless of the field in which it is used, inevitably involves reinventing one or other process. For example, in the machining of industrial components, there are certain limitations whereby certain features of the design, such as inaccessible cavities, for example, are simply unable to be replicated. 3D printing does away with these limitations, opening up a new paradigm where most of these processes are now possible. This paper analyzes how 3D printing has the potential to become a new technological printing tool geared towards architecture.