Back to the Drawing Board
10 March 2025
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Three landscape architects discuss the enduring appeal of hand-drawing, and the important role it plays in their design process.
Nicole Tune: I have to start with a hand drawing. It’s the quickest and best way to organize my ideas about a space and get what’s in my head down on paper and see what will work and what won’t. I think once you start drawing you can literally feel the movement within the space. Movement and circulation are such an important part of public spaces and play spaces, and moving your pen over the paper captures that motion.
Morné Hugo: For me, drawing by hand gives me the ability to quickly explore design ideas and get something in front of people. Sketching is a very fluid process, you see it happening in front of your eyes. It doesn’t feel ‘final’ so it gives people a sense that the design is still changing, and they can have input and influence the outcome.
Katie Chilton: I’ve learnt that even the roughest, most sketchy CAD drawing looks like a done-deal to people who are unfamiliar with the overall design process. It can make people go quiet right at the time when you want them to contribute. But with pen and paper, you can draw together. If you hand someone a pen and say “Show me what you mean” it’s incredibly empowering to that person. You've given them a voice.
Morné: In meetings with a project team, or even in conversations here in the office, drawing by hand allows you to create on the fly and have a dialogue. Sometimes CAD-ed up plan can seem too finalised and it might inhibit sharing of ideas or constrain the thinking when really, all the options are still on the table.
Katie: Hand-drawing looks like an opportunity. The simplicity invites participation in the process. Even if you're further along in the design and showing a three-dimensional view or you’ve added quite a lot of detail, it still has that feeling that you’re open to ideas.
Nicole: At any point, I find that getting back to pen and pen and paper can help you get un-stuck. Sometimes I take a screen shot of a render or something we’ve done in Revit and draw over the top of it. Getting back to that pen-in-my-hand feeling helps me work through ideas and solve problems quickly.
Morné: For myself, I just like the feel of the paper and a pen or pencil in my hand, and I like revisiting the sketches and plans I’ve made throughout a project. I sometimes give them to clients, but I’ve kept a lot of them; I think most people who enjoy drawing probably do.
Katie: Hand drawings have memories and emotions attached to them. I have some from really early in my career, and even from university. I look back at them, I can remember exactly where I was in my life when I made them. I don’t think anything made in the digital world can do that for me.