Model Sketching, Part 1. In a digital world, sketching as a process of iteration is too often relegated to the past. Coordinating the mind, hand and pencil was once an activity essential to the education of an architect and remained important in order to represent ideas rapidly and concisely. I teach in an architecture school where we still impart these skills because we collectively believe in the act of sketching as a foundation prior to introducing students to the many 3D Modeling Software programs.

Kahn’s poetry between wall and column. As a young architecture student, I remember being awestruck the first time a faculty member introduced me to Kahn’s question: “You say to a brick, ‘What do you want, brick?’ And brick says to you, ‘I like an arch.’ And you say to brick, ‘Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.’ And then you say: ‘What do you think of that, brick?’ Brick says: ‘I like an arch.’”