Whether a building has been long lost or is yet to be erected, the business of visualising it convincingly is both highly technical and demanding. John Goodall talks to five outstanding practitioners about their artistry
An atrium by Studio Indigo
Liam Wales
Architecture and art filled my childhood. My great grandmother, grandmother and father designed, drew and made things all the time and i worked with them. then, i studied sculpture as a student and worked as a cabinetmaker. Making things remains as important to me as drawing. i started doing house portraits after leaving art college and then I began illustrating guidebooks for English Heritage.
It’s essential, when doing a reconstruction drawing, to visit the site and get a sense of it. When doing house portraits, I like to draw on location and to work quickly to give the pictures spontaneity. I never forget a scene and I delight in the way that quirky details—cars, signs and people—bring drawings to life.
Liam Wales at work amid the Cambridge Circus crowds
I now mainly work alongside architects and interior designers to create artistic visualisations of their proposals for new buildings and interiors. I typically work on the basis of their computer-aided drawings (CAD); in effect, I embellish the 3D wire frame of a room or structure that they provide. Working by hand, it’s possible to render organic shapes with a facility and also to edit down the excess of material that a computer provides you with. When it comes to my own tastes in architecture, I’m less interested in grand designs than the playful treatment of detail. For this reason, I love the work of Caruso St John Architects— for example, Tate Britain or the signage at Bankside. My favourite interiors, however, are those of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, with its beautifully placed objects and sculpture.
Visualising a proposal for a new house by Levitate architects
Chris Jones-Jenkins
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