By Heba Shoaib, PhD
My understanding of cities and the chaos of urban life is deeply rooted in my sketchbook. It is through drawing where I understand design not just as a tool for representation but also as a means of discovery and transformation.
During my formative years as an architecture student, sketching was my primary language – a way to capture the essence of an idea and translate my personalized insights of a place. This practice deepened during my graduate studies, where I explored the transformative power of transportation infrastructure through modes of representation that brought together fragments of the urban landscape. Drawing reveals hidden orders and the potentials for connection and sketching (both freehand with traditional pen and trace paper and increasingly digital) has been integral to my experience. I use the process to shape buildings and the spaces defined by them.
Sketching has long been a fundamental practice in architecture and urban design, serving as both a tool for conceptualization and a means of communication. Today, with the massive takeover of digital tools, sketching continues to be a foundational practice, enabling designers to engage in intuitive problem-solving and effectively communicate their ideas and visions. The importance of sketching in the urban design process is not just as a method of drafting designs per se but also as a crucial practice for conceptualizing and experimenting. Digital sketching has amplified this practice, moving it to another level of precision, flexibility, and efficiency, and allowing for creative integration with other design tools.
Application
In my first project at the LOUMED (Louisville Medical and Educational) campus in Kentucky, we worked to enhance the urban design of one particular corridor. Today, Chestnut Street is currently an unremarkable car-dominated corridor but, in the future, it will become the central campus spine. I approached the task by tracing the spatial boundaries of the street, underscoring the fragmented parcels of interstitial spaces and seeking ways to connect them. This practice provided a segue on how the street could take on a new identity and serve as a binding tissue for the four primary institutions. Initial drawings on trace paper were augmented with layers of digital tracing.
My second contribution at Gamble Associates involved the conceptual design for a new building in Chelsea, MA for a local non-profit. The effort involved the design of a 10,000sf educational building as well as the definition of a new community public space on its edges. The design solution advanced a fluid interface between inside and outside which expressed the Latin American character of the organization. A lively “placita” serves as a connective tissue between the new and existing buildings to accommodate many outdoor activities. I explored the different typologies and hierarchies of in-between spaces in the La Colaborativa project through digital sketching, which allowed me to stratify the multiple layers of these spaces, experiment with their connective possibilities, and develop expansion scenarios into the neighborhood at another scale.
Despite advances in artificial intelligence and ever evolving digital tools, the act of drawing by hand endures. There is a transformative potential in sketching that cannot be replaced or replicated in other ways. The practice effectively channels the intuition of the designer directly from the mind to the paper (or screen) and serves as an effective means of communicating complex ideas and accumulated experiences. Sketching enables the intricate layers of the city to be revealed and uncover its hidden potentials, harnessing its transformative power to revitalize.
Dr. Shoaib was a 2023-2024 SPURS Fellow at MIT during the 2023-2024 academic year. The Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) is a one-year non-degree program for mid-career individuals who are or will be shaping policy in developing countries to further develop their planning, policy-making, and problem-solving skills. She gained professional experience as part of the program at Gamble Associates in the spring of 2024.