Conceptual Sketching for Architecture and Design

1. Course overview: Hi, everyone. I'm Moshe Kat and welcome to Conceptual sketching for Architect. Have you ever thought about what it means to capture the soul of space? Imagine telling a story of an entire design with just a single sketch. That's the power of conceptual sketching. It's not just drawing. It's communicating ideas, emotions, and inspiration in the way that words never could. In this course, I'll show you how to take abstract ideas and turn them into bold architectural concepts. Sketching isn't just a skill. It's a language, a way to translate your thoughts into visuals that can inspire and connect with others. Yet many students are never taught how to find inspiration, how to develop abstract ideas, or how to transform those ideas into architectural designs. That's what we are here to change. Conceptual sketching is about letting your imagination guide your hand. You'll learn how to capture the essence, the mood, and the energy of a space through simple tools like diagrams, ideograms, and compositions. We'll explore how to translate the rhythm of a busy street, the intimacy of an interior, or the fluid movement of a museum into meaningful sketches that bring your ideas to life. We'll start learning how to see the deeper layers of architecture, the form, compositions and signs that make up the soul of a space. Through practical exercises and case studies, you'll discover how to simplify complex ideas into clear, powerful sketches. You create plans, sections, elevations, and the three D perspectives that reflect your unique vision and style. By the end of this course, you'll have a collection of sketches that not only express your ideas but also showcase your creative voice. So if you're ready, let's get started with conceptual sketching. 2. What is conceptual sketch in architecture?: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Conceptual sketching for architects. This is lesson number one. What is conceptual sketching in architecture? The concept in a design process is one of the most important tools and actions in architectural design. The concept contains the soul of a project. It contains the whole idea, the DNA that eventually develops into a real space. Everything actually starts with a conceptual drawing of your project. These first signs, these first lines that represent your translation of the soul of your project is one of the most fascinating and beautiful and important things that you would do as an architect. It is the representation of the foundation of an idea. You're turning your thoughts into visual signs. Your dreams receive their expression for the first time. All your thinking process, all of your thoughts, all of your imaginations, everything that you think should be part of your project is now becoming a real geometry and structure. It becomes a shape, a volume. It finally turns into an architectural space on paper. It is like discovering a wonder, a surprise. This is personally why I fell in love in architecture so much and made it the profession of my life. I love that process where you have 1 million pieces of puzzles and thoughts and feelings and emotions, and everything comes in one line or one sketch into life. This moment of translating dimensions between your inner world into the real world. This thing made me fall in love in architecture. So the conceptual sketch captures the deepest ideas and unique visions that you have for your project, and it is still flexible. It allows you to continue evolving and continue planning through the sketch. It is usually unfinished and looks almost with some errors or incorrections. But this is all part of your evolution of your design. It is allowing you to continuously explore and unfold the new possibilities of your project, and layer after layer, you reveal the depth and potentials and then slowly bring them out in your sketch. While many students and architects don't understand the difference between copying or imitation and interpretation, this is very important for us to understand before we start sketching concepts in architecture. When we imitate or copy a work, we usually stay in the same level and the same shapes and the same structure of the origin image. Our sketch would look exactly the same as the origin view. Imagine a fish. We'll look at this animal, and then we copy it into a building that looks exactly like a fish with the same structure, with the same size, the eyes, the fins, and the whole body. This is a process of copying an imitation. It usually does not evolve our interior world, our knowledge, our insights, our feelings, the soul of things. I usually just represents whatever we see in a very direct way without giving any interpretation whatsoever. In conceptual sketching, we are asked to interpret and work through a process of abstraction. So if we have a fish as inspiration and we want to bring it forward as an architectural project, we don't sketch the same shape of the fish. We try to understand what the fish means for us. What is the special movement of these three elements that a fish has, the main body, the fins, and the rest of the small details that it has. So we have three motions that are flowing and going based on the currencies of the water. So now we're trying to interpret the meaning of being a fish into abstract forms and architectural spaces. So usually the end result will not look as the origin view of the fish. This is the difference between imitation and interpretation. So in any project that you're doing, if you have an inspiration, don't copy it or imitate it. Try to let it go through your system and your filters and interpret it through your eyes, and then bring it out with an extra value and quality that is yours and shows who you are as a creative person. This is exactly the work of the conceptual sketch. This is where we experiment and bring out our ideas and our filters into play. 3. 3D and perspective in conceptual sketching: Hi, everyone. This is Lesson number 12, three D perspectives in conceptual sketching. So the three D perspectives in conceptual sketching is one of the most important tools to show how our design is representing in the three dimensional space with its surroundings and the feel of the architecture looked from far, either a street level or from a bird view or from a different angle, but it is a very important tool to show how the design is actually affecting the building. Personally do that with a very quick representation. It offers me a very quick and powerful visualization of my ideas as it almost exists in real world. So it provides me a sense of a presence of the building and the depth that is missing when I sketch plan, section or elevation. In this case, it gives me a three D understanding of my building. So the three D representation of a conceptual sketch translates my imagination into reality, and it reveals the impact of the building on its environment and the design quality of the building. I tend to add colors, the depths, the shadows, the materials, but in a very abstract way, just to have a feel of the design. So don't be afraid to use colors in a variety of signs and stains, just to see how it impacts the visual potential of your building. The three D perspectives help me also understand the interactions of the facades with each other, and they represent the sculptural quality of the building. And it helps me continue developing the whole design once I have an overview. Of the sculptural feel of the building in 360 degrees. I imagine I'm turning around and almost feeling the whole impact of the different three dimensional shape of the building. Let's do an example together and see how we can sketch a three D concept step after step and see how it goes. Now we're going to do some nice three D perspectives of conceptual sketching. I personally like it a lot. I do a lot of them. I like to play around with intuitive ideas that come to me and just see what kind of an architecture it can represent. So as first stage, I always create a very quick line of the horizon. And then I start just playing with whatever comes out. I just sketch a very quick line without thinking just intuitively. And I try to recognize the architecture in that. So the basic structure of such a three D perspective is the perspective is the horizon line, a tree, the foreground gives me a sense of of depth, very important. And if I look at the shape, I see that these are very strong dynamic arches, I play around with those, create some This is an entrance to a building, maybe close this shape. Now, let's do it differently. Just go down. So it gives it more of a thickness of this part of the facade. Always, when you have a certain flat image in front of you, this perspective, to create a three D, we are going into the Z axis. So we're going inside the perspective, which means we take a corner and just go in and create a parallel line of this arch, like a parallel arch. So this front facade here is now being multiplied, and we see the depth of it through these lines here, this facade. So let's take unnecessary elements and yeah, show these lines of the facade. We can go and create a structure of it. Same thing. This is a straight facade, so we go with a straight line back, and we can play around with creating three angular shape. So it's a bit tilted, makes it more interesting and sculptural. We get another tree, and we show the structure of that facade. Maybe divided into two. Because it makes more sense in such a big facade, we'll create this glass structure. Same thing in front. We'll see a division, a person, and some people in front of the in front of the building with very small dots or lines. It gives us a sense of a scale because if this person is so big here in front, when we go to the back, it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until it reaches the building, and it's practically a line. Let's go back. Let's create another layer. And on top of that, we can work with colors to enhance the feeling of this sketch. So we can work with a different brush. So we have the trees. Let's have some nice blue color for the facade. But as you see, the brush is That's good. Let's work with this brush here. It's softer and gives us a nice sense of the glass. We can work. The more we draw on top of the layer, the color becomes more evident. If we take it back, the lines of the building become more emphasized. So yeah, this is a beginning. So let's go back to the first layer. I usually add some nice elements openings. So if we work with these arches, we might as well create some arches as windows to see what can fit. I mean, maybe thinner ones, so they don't take charge of the big shape. We'll leave some space for the walls. Like that. Maybe some round ones in certain parts. So this is open for interpretation. Yeah. So usually, I like to emphasize the direction of the sun to show that if the sun comes from this part that goes directly into the building, it will be a beautiful reflection inside, for sure. If the sun is here comes inside this part, we will have a very nice arched reflection inside. I go back to the colors, do a bigger pen. And black, I'm emphasizing the depth of the windows. It gives it a more three D feel. Just emphasizing one side of the arch, same as the entrance. We can do that also on the top and the side of these facades. It gives a nice three dimensional feel, maybe some shading of the person, go back to a smaller, go back to a smaller brush, and if we add some flock of birds. Yeah, this is already a conceptual sketch of a three D perspective. So again, we started with a very quick line of flowing arch and then just created the depth of those lines into surfaces, added some nice architectural elements, divisions, just to give it a real feel. We can go more into details if we give it another line to show that each element in architecture has more than one line. It is a material. It has a depth. So there are the more we are going into details, the nicer it feels, the real the nicer it feels, and we have a real feeling of an architecture building. So glass divisions, can keep it full, but it's nicer to see some elements. Yeah. So this is it. Let's do another one, just a quick sketch and then develop it into a three D perspective of a conceptual sketch. Just go with the flow, intuitively find your line or find your movement without thinking. Just go with the flow. It's a nice game to play with and see what kind of an architecture comes out of our intuitive movement. Yeah, let's do another one. So here's our second sketch starting. Again, let's start with a very nice Horizon line. Well, make it as straight as possible. Doesn't have to, but just for the fun of it, sometimes create a diagonal floor. Let's see what kind of a complex motion we can create. Like, play around. I sometimes can't find the right sign for me. So I'm just playing around going back and forth, going very quickly. This is a nice one. I like it. So let's work with it. Okay, as we said, first elements, put a tree here, tree here. Really gives us a scale. You understand that this is a three, four floor building, foreground surface. So it gives us a nice perspective. Play with the lines. Okay, so we already see we have quite a clear building. We have an entrance here. We have the different surfaces on top. So we might as well work with these shapes and forms, create the glass division. Okay. Now, how do we proceed with these free form lines? As we did before, we just pull another line into the depth. We can do it like that. So it's a straight surface or we can go down. So we understand that the surface is not so straight it goes in a different shape or we can create a different arch to enhance or to echo to echo the shape that we've started with or we can create a new form, so it would be almost a circle elliptic form that makes us understand that this is the form of our architecture. Same thing we can do on the other side. So either we close it like that or we create a new form so we can work with with another elliptical form and make sure that we're closing that form into a continuous line. We'll go with another layer on top of that to make it more clear and nicer. These are helping lines that we're working with. So here, as you see, my shape here became this combination of two arches or two circles. Maybe we can work with that. So this is the first one. We keep it and we give it a certain depth and the division. So this is the first one. It's almost like two leaves, one on top of the other. So the second one here, this one can either go like that, I can go deeper inside. So it's a more dynamic feel or we can work with another circular form. It is a nice idea. So it is let's say it's the same language that we are using. So imagine people are coming actually from that tube inside the building. Okay, so we have the structure, more or less concrete, not a division on the understanding that here is an entrance. This arch could be nicer. So this is a depth and an entrance. So let's put a person figure here and some small people conceptual sketches are not so much about the outcome. I don't like to go. I'm not a perfectionist here. I don't want to be working on all the details. It's about giving a feel and understanding. So imagine we have a background as well. So mountains. Okay, so let's do the different structures of the architectural elements, division of the glass, some circular openings. So if you have one, let's do some small ones next to it. So the sun when it enters, it has a beautiful reflection on the other part of the wall. Here, we don't have a lot of space, we can work with circles or we can create the understanding that here, there's another glass facade and it goes around, something happens there. And then maybe we'll take this line and close it. With the main entrance. So we have this continuous flow, like a beautiful flow of surfaces. So we see this as a surface that develops in the back, and this surface is in the front. So we have a nice sense of depth. Yeah, let's connect this angle here. Maybe there are different materials. This is one material, and that will be another. But let's see how it goes. So let's put another layer on top and work with thicker lines. The thicker lines allow us to decide which even thicker, which are the elements or the final lines that we are now sketch. So this is it. So we're just going through the different shapes that we decide as the final ones and give them a clear geometry. It's okay that we see the helping lines on the back. It's a part of our work. It's also just a conceptual sketch. The ground is usually a thicker line, so feel free to to give it a nice thick line feel. And now let's do the shading and some coloring and so on. So we do it on a different layer. The shading, let's go with the line together here. So all the openings, they give us a three D feel. So I'm going just with one arch of the circle. Same thing on the bigger structures. So we see just the arch that is on the background. Here it is. So the shading gives us a very nice feel of three D. So let's do some coloring on another layer. Let's go with the trees. Then with the background. Let's take this brush. Let's go with Let's do some coloring of the glass. So very lightly. We can leave some white spaces. It shows the reflections. As you see, I'm leaving a little bit of whites here I'm filling it, but then it gives a nice sense of reflection on the glass surface. Now I'm adding maybe maybe it's a desert a desert background. So I'm just coloring very quickly. Remember, this is a conceptual sketch. So we're not going too much into details. It's just about the feel. So let's do let's do a darker element here on the background just to have some three dimensional feel of the mountains. Okay. Let's work with some grays for the front. We put some gray on the bottom as a shadow for the person. Now it depends what we want to show as information on top of our sketch. So if you want to say, Okay, take a look at this light, how it enters into different into different places. It depends what information we wish to bring forward. So don't be afraid to take some lines and write the text. Maybe you want to say something about these openings. Text, maybe the background, where it is. Text. So feel free. A conceptual sketch is a very dynamic and flowing sketch you can integrate. It would be actually wise to integrate a lot of texts and information, as much symbols and signs that you can to explain what did you think of how the building works and the special characteristics and definitions of each part, maybe textures. Imagine this part has a different texture. So we do with some hatching technique, maybe cross hatching. So this is one material, maybe stone or aluminum or other materials that you might have considered. Maybe this here let's take an arch line. Go with this flow. So maybe this part here is a different material, you can describe that. Yeah, feel free. Whatever information comes to mind, feel free to share it on top of the conceptual sketch. This is the place to do it. This is how we take these perspectives and develop them into very interesting visionary buildings. I hope you liked it, and keep trying. I personal load, I can tell you I'm doing that every day. I'm playing around. It's so fun. It gives me so many ideas to develop all these new architectural designs. Just do that as well. It's a beautiful exercise, and it will open your imagination and creativity. You will feel that amazing flow that we're all looking for. So enjoy and have fun with sketching. 4. Case Studies - learning from projects: Everyone, this is lesson number 15, studies and learning from projects. So in this lesson, we are going to go through some of my projects. I wanted to show you some examples and how can we learn from those experiences? And how do we create the conceptual sketches based on the different stages of design, especially in the beginning when an idea comes to life and wants a certain representation. How do we do that? How do we develop that and translate our inner life, our feelings, our thoughts, the intimate visions. How do we represent that into conceptual sketching? So the first project I want to talk to you about is the light drops in Helsinki. The light drops are urban spaces, urban healing spaces that are designed to help people, especially in the northern parts of the world where there is no sunlight, almost most of the day and most of the year to bring these light spaces that allow people to get inside, sit and be washed almost by sunlight effects and lamps that give them the sensation that they are now in the middle of summer in the Mediterranean. So the project started when I was just playing around with the sun at the beach. I was just looking around and playing and imagining what an amazing element this light form is and how I'm privileged to sit underneath that beautiful sun and imagine that there are so many people around the world that don't have that privilege, and they don't have the sunlight as accessible as I do. So how do I bring it to them if I could only bring some drops of light to those people? And this is how this sketch came to life immediately when I understood that I want to create these small drops of light and put them in different places in the world. So I had vision of these light drop shapes and structures that contain within themselves a very strong light effect. And this is what you see in the first sketches. These are the conceptual sketches. So I imagine an urban environment in Finland and Helsinki, a square in the city, and these drop shaped architectures are standing there and can be transformed from one place to another. But inside, when you sit almost in this shape and form of a sauna and these beautiful glass stairs, you are experiencing a very strong impact of lights and lamps that give you a sensation of middle of a summer. Together with the acoustics, so I used music and sounds and vibrations that react to light, and the light reacts to the vibration. So you are basically surrounded by healing forces as light and sound that affect your health, affect your muscles, and you are basically relaxing on the way home or on the way to work. It also creates spaces for personal reflection, but most importantly spaces and places for people to interact and come into communication, especially in those nordic parts of the world, where communication is sometimes scarce. So the light bring people together to communicate. In the northern parts of the world, we have beautiful light effects in the sky in the northern lights we see sometimes a year, because of the different conditions of the sky and the atmosphere, we see all these beautiful reflections of lights and shapes forming in the sky. So I wanted to take this almost environmental phenomena and bring it also into a small scale of space. And then in sometimes you can see these lamps creating beautiful effects that people are used to see on the sky. Now they are in the reach of their hand. And they can sit inside of that actually and feel the dynamics of these lights moving. Another project that I want to present to you is City Bridge in Florence, Italy. So the city bridge is an idea of a cultural and creative hub in the city. It's on top of the Arno River in Florence, and it is supposed to be built instead of one of the existing bridges, Ponte Da Verrazzano. So the idea behind it came from a simple question. I went to the site and asked the concrete, sad bridge Bridge, what do you dream of being? What do you want to be? What do you wish for? And the bridge answered, I don't want to be a bridge. I don't want to be an element that connects to parts of the city. I want to be a city in itself. I want to be a space for meetings and a space for creating and for dreaming and for children to stay on, not to move from one side to another. So this is when the idea came to life that a bridge can be a city in itself, a cultural city in itself. And to use that language of motion and transformation, I took the location of it, so above the waters of the river. So those signs started slowly to build up. The current signs started to build up and create a connective complexity of lines. That's supposed to bring people from different parts of the city into one space. So slowly, these first lines became structures and the structure became spaces, and the spaces allow different functions to happen. So this interior dialogue, you see here in the sequence of sketching, how it slowly developed from one sketch to another, a different condition came to life and then changed and influenced the whole space. So I introduced roads that continued from the city and from those roads you enter into those spaces that allows you to do different cultural functions, museums, places for children to play, theaters, exhibition centers, and so on. And on top of all of that is the continuation of the park and the gardens. So you have different layers of the bridge, and each one allows different functions to happen almost as a small city that contains all the functions of a small neighborhood. Another interesting project is the dancing architecture in Santa Domingo, the Dominican Republic. This project started from the understanding of the local dance, which is the meringue, which was born in the Dominican Republic. And I wanted to take that cultural phenomenon of a dance and movement and make a project out of it, like a symbol, an icon that represents the most beautiful thing that I experienced from that place. So I started the sketching, the conceptual sketching by trying to figure out the different motions and the different movements of the dance and the different colors and textures of the clothing when people dance the meringue. So I wanted to understand the spirit of the design. So I'll take the movements and the lines and the beautiful colors and the textures, put them together into one structure. So all of those elements, I wanted to translate them into space. So I took the form of the dynamic and twisting towers. So we have a dancer, the woman which moves with a beautiful red fabric, and the other partner that dances with her, which is more stable and rigid and creates a certain stability. And to use the colors, the vibrations of the facades to put different functions and the cultural elements inside the whole complex and to see the urban impact of such a space when you create this landmark, and how does that change the environment? So an understanding of a dance and then translating it into a sketch becomes eventually the design of a building. When I was a student, I lived in Florence, and some professor used to say that you could skip my class and not come altogether on the condition that you would walk in the streets of the city and sketch and learn from it. I happily did that, skipped the classes and made the city my biggest teacher and mentor. The power of a place is something you should also find. The inspiration is always around you in every corner, window or square. It's your responsibility to find beauty everywhere. You choose to be an architect, so there must be a poet within you, and that poet wants to see the world through different eyes. So as I fell in love with the city of Florence, I hope you will find that, too, in your city and make her your partner in the journey. Just open your eyes and your heart because beauty is all of those places where eyes are not necessary. 5. Creative exercises: Everyone, this is lesson number 16, creative exercises. In this lesson, we're going to do some creative exercises that trigger and help us with conceptual sketching and how to develop ideas and that interior dialogue within us into nice sketches and ideas of innovative amazing projects. We'll do that through some examples that I have created myself, but I hope that you can take that as a beginning stage of creating your own amazing innovative spaces. So the first exercise is to start drawing quick, spontaneous signs on paper without thinking at all. Try to keep your mind empty of thoughts, just to go with the flow, let the line lead you and just follow the flow of the lines, move very freely and intuitively. And once you have these marks, on top of the paper, begin to connect them and imagine a story or a sequence of shapes that come out of the paper. So if you've created different curved and round shaped lines, take that as a language and transform those lines into volumes and more complex shapes. Once you finish that, just add some small figures of human beings inside those abstract signs that came out and try to figure out if you are now envisioning powerful sense of architecture or space. Try to consider look at every place where you have positioned a person, try to look around it and see, do I have here a beginning of a beautiful structure? And how can I take that and translate it one step further into an entire building? Let that lead you to a volume and from a volume through a three D representation of architecture. The second exercise is the life story of a cube. So let's do a diagram that starts with a very simple cube, and imagine it has a life story of itself. So a cube is born, and from that moment of birth, the cube is changing. It has different events of life happening. It becomes bigger and grows up, and then it has amazing beautiful moments in life. It falls in love, and then it has downfalls and it has dramas. And the cube has a very clear life and a story. So let's try to take that cube from the moment of its birth and tell the story of its development. So I took here the cube and imagine that it had a very dynamic and dramatic life. You see it as a second sketch. Inside the cube, many things are happening, a vortex of dramatic events are happening, colliding with each other. And from that dramatic life, the cube transforms into a longer element, and inside the lines are not chaotic anymore. They become more fluid, organic, and balanced, and it gives a more understanding of a growth. And a maturity of that life event. And it has different points of discovery. So it became more of a journey instead of a chaotic experience. And from the third sketch, the next step was to take these organic and balanced life events and create out of them a beautiful structure of three dimensional lines and arches and domes that develop into a volume. Next to it, I have created some small figures that allows me to feel how this beautiful shape is now considered almost as architecture, together with light effects that are glowing from within towards the outside. And basically, that represents the end of a cube's life. So this is maybe the passing on of the cube towards a new dimension. So from a moment of birth as a cube now became this beautiful dome structure. So for me, this dome structure represents a new innovative form and shape of funeral space or a place of memory, place where people become lights and transform into the next dimension. The next exercise would be transforming feelings into spaces. So let's do it through the exercise of picking a feeling, in this case, happiness. Let's imagine what happiness is and translate it into emotion. What happens to you when you are happy? How does happiness move? So the first sketch that I did is, when I'm happy, I am connected. All the parts of me feel connected. Different parts, different dimensions within me are connected into one center. I feel that everything is working in some sort of a flow and a reason and everything is working harmoniously. So everything is connected. And then as a second stage, I would suggest to take it to the extreme, what happens if that moment becomes the peak, the highest moment, and you take it into the extreme. So from happiness, I would go from the next stage just this beautiful explosion of emotions of feelings of structures. So sketch the initial sketch is now becoming more of a volume, a three dimensional and starts to erupt and explode. And in the middle, there is light bursting everywhere and everything is connected and turning towards the top. After you do that, you take your sketch to the extreme, try to give a volume, a character, a material, and imagine that as architecture. So for me, all these parts became parts of a building, and they are connected. Everyone is a single part representing the different dimensions within me, and they're all connecting in one point. And in that point, there is like this beautiful light sculpture opening up towards the sky. So this is this conceptual representation of this beautiful feeling that starts from a point and then goes to the extreme and then becomes an architectural space. Do that with a different feeling of your choice and try to develop it conceptually like that. The fourth and the last exercise is the human being figure that represents you, basically. So just draw a very simple line as a ground and then put on top of it a human figure. Around that figure, try to represent a certain structure and a shape. Start first with a very simple linear line and then maybe diagonal and then maybe around around the person. And see what effect does that create? Do you like the fact that it has a certain arch or do you like the fact that it has diagonal wall turning towards it? How does it feel when you are inside this shape and this space? So, try to have a dialogue within yourself as you sketch those things and imagine what it is of a feeling when you are that person and you are creating the structure around this person. How does it feel for you? Do you need to change that? What if I open it up? What if I made it more extreme? What if I created this infinite lines that are turning around this person? So this is how you slowly develop an idea of a sense of feeling from geometry and the impact of it on you as a person. So do that exercise and try to feel what lines in geometry create the most powerful feeling for you and use that as a beginning point for an architectural design.