At EBA we explore adjacent worlds. These explorations might include forays into writing, fashion, photography or illustration. You might find us studying the service details of a fine dining restaurant or borrowing strategies from advertising. Slice of life writing, street style photography and urban sketching are three tools, borrowed from adjacent worlds that we explore to convey story and style, look and feeling. Slice of life writing can be a tool to help you tell me your brief. Street style photography is a concept we’re all familiar with that captures the feelings and stories we tell through our clothes. As an architect, urban sketching is a tool I use to see the real story, to slow down and see beyond.
Like street style photography, urban sketching is a way of capturing the world around us. 20 years ago, as a first year architecture student, I started my first job in the industry. When I walked into the converted Queenslander on Newmarket Road I was surrounded by drawings boards, T squares, tracing paper and scalpels for scratching out errors made in ink. This was a world of craft. Paper and ink put together by hand, taped together and photocopied. On my first day of work, I was given a mission. To find a small notebook and pencil and start documenting the world around me. If there was a garden step that was particularly delightful to walk up, I was to take out my tape measure and jot down the dimensions. If there was a low garden wall that seemed just the perfect height, I should note down that height. The mission was clever, it was a way for me to start learning the language of the world around me. Unfortunately, I was a shy country girl who wanted to be a big city star and the idea of taking out a ruler and measuring a step IN PUBLIC was mortifying, so I failed the mission. The concept that lay at the heart of the mission stayed with me. Though I didn’t physically note anything down, I began a lifelong process of mentally noting that beautiful garden step or that wall that was the perfect sitting height. It changed the way I looked at the world. Now, I have a sketching habit that contributes to my skills as an architect.
During the covid lockdown of 2020, I drew 14 terraces along South Dowling Street. I broke the rules of urban sketching and drew them from Google Street view. South Dowling Street was a street that I walked every day, on my way to buy lunch from the Organic Bread Bar. Each drawing took on a life of its own. Behind the pen and watercolour, new stories started forming, as though each image was a snippet from a new story book. To enter South Dowling Street is to enter your eccentric aunt’s closet. Dappled light filters through the plane tree curtains. It’s dusty, a little mouldy and boxes upon boxes line each side. Each box has been hand painted, some lovingly hand touched, on others, the paint flakes fall like the autumn leaves. Secret alleyways and mouse trails runout from this closet. Shift a box aside and sunlit jewel boxes call you closer. You can be anyone you want here. A straight-laced banker, a mauve covered librarian. The jewels, oh how the jewel’s shine. Adoring ironwork, glistening lampposts and lace-like doilies.
Like slice of life writing or street style photography, urban sketching is a tool that helps me craft stories, tell stories or see the real feeling or story behind the look or style. What story is waiting to be told behind your outfit, within the storied walls of your home, what do you want to feel?
