This perspective sketch of a rural house for the Savery family of Shropshire, UK, left my studio recently, on its way to a planning meeting.

The project was a rare chance to create a series of presentation drawings for a caring builder who runs his own sawmill and who makes such a special effort to include feature timbers in his designs.

In my own projects, I draw only a few lines between sculpture and architecture. Instead of trying to “conquer” Nature as most modern architects do, I try to draw my designs out of their location. Here’s a ‘before’ and ‘after’ shot of some stone stairs I designed around future tree root growth. Layers of non-biodegradeable padding and airtex have been included to ‘direct’ growing roots back into the hillside to form a strong ‘footing’ against future high winds.

When designing your own garden feature or house,
the more attention you pay to detail,
the less problems you’ll have with it over time.

I sketch out every feature when designing a product, a landscape or an entire house. In my following house design for a US developer, I sketched out everything from garage flood defences, kitchen/bathroom/s layouts to carpet weaves and lighting. This is to get a full feeling for the home which develops from the house. In this way, each facet of my designwork holds true when combined.

Tomorrow Design

I usually sketch practical buildings that are buildable now using existing building materials and present technology.

When I do not need to be guided in this by my clients, I enjoy designing that which would be hard or difficult to construct using present technologies.  This is an example of a Moonbase created for a book on Space adventure:

If you are also interested, as I am, in the study of intuitive living, non-formal and non-classified communal architecture, I recommend the book “Architecture Without Architects” by Doctor Bernard Rudofsky who has written a number of other interesting books including ‘Are Clothes Modern’, ‘Streets For People’ and ‘The Unfashionable Human Body’.