Why I still draw the first plan by hand

Every project in this studio starts on paper, and clients are sometimes surprised by that. The renders come later, and they come out precise. But the first plan, the one where the building decides what it wants to be, is drawn with a pencil, badly, at least five times.

The reason is not nostalgia. A CAD line has authority it has not earned yet. It is perfectly straight, perfectly dimensioned, and it quietly tells everyone in the room that the decision has been made. A pencil line makes the opposite claim: this is a proposal, argue with it. At the concept stage, that is the correct message.

There is also a speed argument. In an hour of sketching I can test six arrangements of the same house. In CAD I would test two, and I would fall in love with the first one because I had spent forty minutes drawing its stairs.

The hand drawings do not survive into the documentation. Everything you sign off on is measured and exact. But if you ever wonder why the first thing I show you looks rough, it is rough on purpose. It is the last moment when changing everything costs nothing.