Author's Forum:Taking a Pen for a Walk

So we are going to get started here. Welcome to On the Park Bench, a public square conversation brought to you by the Congress for the New Urbanism on the Park Bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and related fields that are connected to the built environment. And today we have an author's form on the book, Taking a Pen for a Walk. With author Raymond Gindros. Who everybody in new urbanism knows is Ray and the interviewer moderator is Marina Curry. So share your thoughts on hashtag on the Park Bench, WWW. Dot Tiny URL. Com slash OTPB feedback. And join us for an upcoming webinar in 2 weeks. We have connecting commercial corridors also on Tuesday from 12 to one PM. On April the thirtieth. I go to see new. Org slash resources slash on the bark bench for more information and to register. And if you haven't already registered for seeing you 32, I strongly recommend that you look into registering and attending and making the arrangements because CNU. 32 has some awesome programming. The sessions, are gonna be great. The tours, and, seeing Cincinnati, Cincinnati has a lot of interesting urbanism that's been going on. It's a city of neighborhoods, many of which have been revitalized. Great architecture, lots of things to learn. Fifteenth through eighteenth. And we look forward to seeing you there going to see new. Org slash seeing you 32 to find out more and register. And I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. As a co-founder of urban design associates, Rayake andros is one of the pioneering architects of the new urbanism. He led the development of participatory processes, planning processes and the revival of pattern books. to implement urbanism and he was the principal in charge of dozens of projects that transformed distressed low-income neighborhoods into mixed income communities. Raise taught at urban design at Yale, Carnegie Mellon, and Hampton universities. He was a senior fellow of the Princes Foundation in London. Now I believe it's a Kings Foundation. And he was the chairman of the board of the Congress for the New Organism, the Seaside Institute, and the National AIA Committee on Design. He was the principal author of the urban design handbook and the architectural pattern book both put out by Norton. And the place of dwelling. Published by the Princes Foundation. And Marina Curry is an expert in sustainable urban development, regional and master planning, transit oriented development, and form based codes as a partner at DPZ co-design. She has been director of the Washington DC area office since 2,007 a licensed architect and fluent in several languages. Curries worked on the design and implementation of. Projects in US, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East, including groundbreaking new codes around the world that mandate resilient urbanism. I'm Rob Studeville, editor of Cnu's Public Square. And the book is taking a pen for a walk discovering towns and cities through drawing and throughout his career, ake in dress was constantly sketching cities and places he visited all around the world. And many urbanists were fortunate enough to get his books sent sent in the mail and as well as greeting cards during the holidays that had his drawings. And on these drawings and books have been put together in a book and we're gonna hear more all about that this today. And first there's going to be a presentation by Ray Fold by brief discussion between Ray and Marina and then Q&A from the audience. So please use the Q&A function of Zoom to ask you questions as they occur to you. So welcome, ake Indros and Marina Curry to CN News on the Park Bench. I'm going to pass this along to Ray. For his presentation. Thank you, Rob. for the introduction, also thank you for this opportunity. This is an exciting moment for me to see. Work from long ago. And not so long ago compiled into a single volume of drawings. The book is called Taking a Pen for a Walk. Which describes an approach to drawing which I'll describe in a bit in detail in a little bit from now. It's a book of drawings. There are 532 sketches drawn almost entirely between 1989 and 2,010. They were originally published in an annual publication from Urban Design Associates called pages from a sketchbook. And they were then, we finished doing that in 2,010. And I had always wanted to explore the possibility of having it, having them republished in a combined volume. Interestingly, I spoke to some people in publishing and they were interested, like the sketchbooks. Couldn't figure out how to Well, the market was or how to make what category it fit into. And then in May of 2022. The distinguished California architect Mark Appleton. And I were both in New York to receive a Ross Award at the ICA. Hi, in the course of our conversations. He said he'd always wanted, he's always thought about. Publishing the sketchbooks as a single volume, would I be interested? And of course I was. Same as Mark as an architect, but he also has a publishing company called Tailwater Press. Which publishes books on architecture. On the West and particularly on California architects. I immediately decided that this was a great opportunity and so I'm grateful to him and to Stephanie Manson Hing in his office, the graphic designer. Who we worked as a team to put this very very beautiful work together. So it's a book of drawings in that sense it's an art book. It's also a book about urbanism because the drawings are places which I find particularly comfortable. Easy to use, pleasant to be in. Fulfilling as an urban experience easy to find my way through. The drawings are in effect a kind of notation of that. So in that sense, it's a book on urbanism. Since the most exciting moment in exploring something is when you first see it, a lot most of these are sketches in places other than where I live, either traveling for pleasure or business or research. And in the course of doing that, I've tried to quantify and describe. Some of the different characteristics that are important. But they're also travel sketches. So some people who have seen the book. Consider it to be a travel book. One in which you can either do armchair traveling, Robert Davis, and a forward that's in the book. Talked about sitting in his most comfortable armchair and browsing through and imagining that he was going through these spaces. Another reader said that she traveled to almost all of these places. But in looking at the book, saw it in a new way and what back memories of that. I've noticed which suggests that the book should have a wider audience than a new urbanist community or even the architecture and planning community. Which is exactly what I hoped would happen because in a way it is also a kind of gentle manifesto for good urbanism. By having examples of good urbanism in an enjoyable format. My hope is that people in other fields we'll read it and we'll begin to. Focus more and more on the human qualities of our and our, of our environment. So I want to go back to Mark Appleton for a minute. Mark was a student of mine at Yale in, 1,968. He was in the first year program. It was my very first time teaching a jail. And he remembered that. And over the years we served on various boards together. And so, it was natural that I would send him the the sketches and as a result he came forward with this particular with the idea of producing. This book. It's also a book all about drawing or on drawing and that gets us to the title. Taking a pen for a walk. To explore towns and cities. That line comes from Paul Clay. May shock by new urbanists and ICAA friends. The inspiration from this is one of the Main teachers of the Bauhaus modernist movement. But, wrote that in his pedagogical sketchbook, which was a record of his teaching exercises. And in that exercise, he had students. Play with lines and imagine experiences to create a kind of abstract composition. That's summarized and experience in the course of time as you move through space or around the country. Whatever you were doing. And you can see that to a certain extent in his. Paintings. For me, it meant something different. And the first time I read it. I recall maybe the most important point in my experience withdrawing. And that is between my second and third year of architecture school. I took a drawing course. Over the summer. We did a lot of drawing out in old ruins with very irregular forms. And most importantly, we had a life drawing course. And the exercise. It was a contour drawing. And of course, as you all know, with the contour drawing, You focus on the model on the body that you're drawing. And you hold on a big piece of paper. You hold the, you hold your, crayon or charcoal. And you look at the model and you follow the line of the body. With your eye and with your hand, both your eye and your hand. Sometimes it's a blind contour drawing that you don't even look at the paper. First time I did that. I felt a kind of tingling in the back of my neck. Because my hand I and brain were connected in a way they hadn't been connected before. It's not just a way of drawing. It's a way of processing information and thinking. Now. When you take a pen for a walk That's different than sitting down and saying, I'm going to do a drawing. You're taking a pen for a walk and following the lines that you see. You're involved in a kind of research. It's an exploration. Looking for possibilities. Trying to understand what you're looking at. So I found when I went to places. That I liked and wanted to understand why. They were so appealing. I could take a pen for a walk. And began to discover what it was. So this book is a collection. Of these walks. Over time. Now the human body is a good example because obviously there are no right angles. There's no way to set up a prospective construction with. Right. Vanishing points and lines because it's such a complex form. That's also true of urbanism. Very often, the spaces are so complex. In particular struck me. When I was in Greece for the first time. And. 1963. And as you move around these spaces. The forms are completely irregular. I have an order. But there are many different angles and curves and forms. And so I took a pen. For a walk and this drawing actually from 1,965 of a village and a street turning. You can, in that you can see how the contour drawing method works, that it's a continuous series of continuous lines in different parts of the space so it flows. And you begin to understand and feel the space and the character of that space. In another case. It was not. So close to the building on this curving street The only thing I could think of doing was to draw. The openings in the wall of the building in such a way that you actually see the curve of the space. And you can see by the drawing of the stairs and particular that these are continuous lines. So this is one kind of taking a pen for a walk. Now much more complicated images require a different kind of line. So this is a drawing from much later, 2,01160 almost 50 years later. And it's of the Cathedral in Prague Castle. I was struck with the relationship between the soaring, towering mass of the cathedral. And the delicate, rather gentle scale of the buildings of everyday life that come right up to it. How to draw. Well, instead of a single line, I found myself exploring with a pen. Vertical lines without necessarily regard for what the edges were like and build up. Peace by piece, always looking at the at the at the towers of the cathedral. And drawing it to create this drawing of the cathedral. And of the Gothic architecture. And then to see that in contrast. With the scale of the buildings around it. And this for me had an important lesson. We're always concerned about how we place big boxes into delicate, delicately scaled urban fabrics. And this suggests by articulating the the parts and pieces of the big piece to be in something to mediate a scale with the smaller pieces produces this absolutely magical square. In Prague. Then there's another direction to go. This is another drawing from 1966 in Rome. On the north side of Piazza, Nivona, the outside of Piazza, Nevada, looking towards the church of Santa Maria de Lanima in Rome. And in this kind, it's more analytic where we're mostly concerned with the impact of the landmark function of the church facade. On the shape of the street less with the detail of the street. I like this drawing for the book because it begins to suggest hour moving through the space. And so therefore it is in fact the drawing that appears. On the cover of the book. So I'm going to take you through a few of the pages of the book. To give you an idea of how it's organized and then we'll move on to a discussion of some of the issues that it races. Lark, Appleton and Stephanie, created this, graphic image. In the end papers to remind us that this is after all a book of drawings. It's hard to miss, isn't it, when you see this rush of images. If you look at it for a while, and start focusing on different things. You'll see the basic elements of good urbanism. There are windows, you can find windows that you're looking out of. There are windows that you're looking into from the outside. There are facades. There are arcades that you're walking under. There are compositions of buildings. There are towers, there are landmarks, it's all here. And the end papers. And then you turn the page again and everything is calm and quiet again. For the title page. With the title taking a pen for a walk, discovering towns and cities through drawings. Now these drawings first appeared in a series of sketchbooks called Pages from a sketchbook between 1989 and 2,010. So the challenge was how do we take 20 little books and you see all of them there piled up on my wife's piano on the upper left. Well, working with Mark Appleton and his team member, Stephanie Manson Hing. We put together the book. So 20 little books becomes one big book. The first of the sketchbooks. Was 1989. And it came about because I went to Europe twice. And carried the same sketchbook. I hadn't travelled in a while. You know, I drew a great deal in my twenties. And then we started the firm and there was little time or energy to do it. But then, in my late forties and 1989. I decided I'd take a sketchbook along going to a conference in Amsterdam. And then took the same sketchbook. Going to Paris. When I came back, a member of our team at Udia, Young Lee, who was an interest in graphic design, said, we should do something with this, let's publish a little book and send it to clients and colleagues at Christmas time. I'm grateful for my partners who agreed to do so and began the tradition. This first one, I'm only, this is just a summary that's in the introduction. I'm only showing a few of the of the sketches. I was still pretty rusty at that point. Sketches are pretty primitive. But so the theme of urbanism and urban facades. Both Paris where it's very continuous. And Amsterdam where it's continuous on the lower floors but becomes highly individualized with these spiky peak roofs on the upper floors. Was the basic theme of the overall book. And that led to the first category of sketchbooks. There are a total of 20 reproduced here in a new format. I'm going to show them here in in in that new format. And the first part of the book deals with the first category, which are sketchbooks based on themes. As in that first sketchbook, when I came back, I would I would produce. The the I would lay the drawings out on a table. And. And see what the theme was and emerge it later i would go to places with the theme So these are these are all sketchbooks that are based on some sort of a theme. The first first one in this series then. The second sketchbook is called conversations I'm still inspired by Charles Moore, who I taught with back when Mark was was also at Yale. And Ken Bloomer the 3 of us were a team. The Influence of Charles was to think about buildings in a slightly different way and think about them. As making state making statements for the builder statements is maybe too strong a word sometimes it's just a comment or remark with it. And so if buildings together are making individual statements, then we have to think of the spaces of the city. As the setting for conversations in this first sketchbook. Was a record of conversations overheard in the course of the year, 90. For example, on the left hand side, you see this, rather jaunty, quite ambitious, tiny little city hall. And the village of Botton in Switzerland. Whether it's extraordinary tower coming up. It joins other buildings which you see on the further left. Yeah, in creating the landmarks and the civic. Symbols for this tiny village. They all work together. They animated, but in a very dignified way. On the other hand, on the right hand side is Pianza Ravignan and Bologna. Where the Roman grid meets the medieval roads. Approach robes, and we have a vestige of the many towers of warring families that once, occupied these buildings. Because of soil conditions, they're leaning and the oppression I had. Was it's almost a kind of brawl going on, a drunken brawl of towers and you combine that. With the busyness of the square, the multiple styles of architecture, renaissance, medieval, some modern buildings, designer stores, scooters buzzing by, taxis crashing through. It's enough to convince you that it's time for lunch with too much of this conversation. Another one in from that same book and on Kona, Francesca de Giorgio's tower in the middle of the page. Seems to shout out across the valley up to a pier up to a piazza of noble houses high on the hillside. And then in Paris built just before the revolution, the Place de lodion. The perfect circle, creates a ring of buildings who appear to be applauding. Moveier's theater in the middle. It's very helpful. When, building speak to each other in a language. With vocabularies which we can understand so that these buildings include us in their conversation they encourage us to participate. In the life of the city. Another year, 1994, it was about connections. I was intrigued with the farmhouse on the left because It looks odd the way the 2 parts of the house. Come together that catches your eye, but it tells the story of the humble house being built first, the front house being built later. And gives a sense of the history of the place. That's 1 kind of connection. The upper farmhouse on the right is in a region of France where people lived in caves for a long time and then built houses in front of it, but the caves are still there behind. So in this house, we visited with friends. You could walk back, from the built rooms into the carved rooms, but beyond that, there is a network of tunnels connecting the whole area. So that you could easily escape the Kings tax collectors or during the Second World War find a safe place. And those connections are still existing. And in the bottom right a farmhouse complex just near Paris very old buildings internet and a preserved natural region. People who live there have all the hi tech equipment, satellite dishes, computers so that they are connected both to the earth. And to the busy business world. We live in in Germany my wife's family name is Milton Berg so her brothers the pianist performed for number of years in Miltonburg. We went one year. And I was struck with a continuity of the architecture and how the parts all work together. But also it seemed odd and an interesting connection to have a family reunion so far away from where we usually did. Another sketchbook is about Windows, which I think are perhaps the most important single part. Of the architecture of urbanism. The symbols of human habitation, they tell us that there are people behind them. Make us feel safe in the streets. Windows looking out, we can see the street and see that we can have some degree of managing and control of it. Windows this time back home in Pittsburgh. Looking to the buildings around us when we move to a condo. Make us feel part of that place enable us to supervise the environment make sure the little boy on the library wall across the street doesn't fall. And from the street, the windows of course have this tremendously important function of making it feel like a lived and safe environment. In this case, it's a new building next to an old house. The forms are similar. The window shapes are similar. It all works together to create, I believe, a good urban composition. Urban Rooms was another theme. On the top. Pair we have Techwater Quad in Christ College Oxford. It's sort of classical space in which the architecture is uniformly classical and monumental all the way around. And then a different Oxford on the upper right, Oxford, Mississippi, the town square. Where the classical element is only on the civic building. And the buildings of everyday life provide comfortable accommodation around it. Different kind of urban room, but no urban room nevertheless. And below High Street in Oxford with Queen Anne College working hard to provide the animation. That a commercial street needs even though it has no commercial activity. And Oxford, Ohio on the right with his diverse buildings. Framing a space leading to a square with a water tower not the turret or university but the water tower which has become a symbol for the town. Now, a change happened in 19. 90, 7, in which, we spent a lot of time in one place and began focusing on One city. In this case, St. Petersburg. Where it's all about the water and I was struck with the architecture of the bridges as well as the monumental aspects of the of the main spaces of the city is, which are marked by these extraordinary landmarks. And that led to part 2. Which is instead of being based on themes, the sketchbooks are based on a particular place, which allowed much more time to explore them. And to get involved with the second part of my great interest in perceiving environments, which is how do you record, draw, and design and experience in the course of time. These sketches from the 1919 65 study I did with a man who was both a psychologist and a cinematographer. Show a sequence of going from narrow spaces. With landmarks at the end to wider spaces. Suggesting that organizing walks as segments connected by spatial events and landmarks. Is a way of creating a coherent experience. You can see that in this plan of the town. There are 5 segments each separated by a piazza marked by landmarks. And you can see that in both diagrams. Now back to the sketchbooks, the first one where this became apparent was in Piena. Where We. Founded Robert Davis, their career and I jointly founded the seaside Penzas Society brought excursions there, the numbers of drawings, many people did drawings, had some exhibits. And published the sketchbook. The sequences here, there are 4 of them coming in from the town and here's just one of them to show as you go from the entrance in the town on the upper left through the gate along a space towards a landmark and then opening out into the space itself. And finally sitting in this magnificent first urban room of the Renaissance by I envisioned by Alberti, Rosolino, and Pope Pius the second. It's also the place where another change happened and that is that my wife Marilyn said to me we really need to do something with these drawings Why don't we start a foundation and use the drawings as a fundraising device? To. A means to support travel study abroad for students, which is what happens. So I've dedicated the book to her for many reasons. This book is a kind of memoir of our very long marriage together. At least 20 years of it. But also her doing that made the process of drawing into much more of a project. The architects always have to work on deadlines. Programs. Made it into a project and so I was able to put still more into the drawings. The next stop was Urbino. And in Urbino, we looked at the overall town and we looked at sequences as you can see in the little sketch at the right. And this experience of Urbino is all about getting places and moving up through with it through the spaces and seeing how the landmarks help us to achieve that. Later sketchbooks went to different parts of the country and the world, at least of Europe. I found the sequence of spaces that Addison Meisner created in the Via's at Palm Beach. To be absolutely extraordinary. So in the book, you'll see a series of excursions through Meisner's, American Med. Mediterranean dream world. And of course, just as we'll always have Paris, We'll always have seaside in the new urbanist movement. And so seaside. Was an important sketchbook for me to be able to understand some of the lessons. Robert Davis always called Panza City of ideas I call seaside a city of ideas one of which is that it's innovated, in demonstrating how we can comfortably live. With neighbors with the use of windows that we see. Flashes of what's happening in the environment around us so we feel connected just as we do. In a place in Paris on the upper left. And walking through the town. Through this series and sequence of spaces is always a thrilling experience. With the sister cities association between Norfolk, Virginia. And too long trance. Oh, we did a sketchbook that compared the 2 cities and looked at walks to see how, for example, neighborhoods connected to commercial areas. And what the character of those different neighborhoods are when you look at them. The form of the cities are very similar. But the architecture is very different. And of course Paris, a series of walks, in both the Pali Royal, the Louvre and through the passages. And I'm going to conclude the images. With a walk that is one I think of the most informative and beautiful that I know. We're beginning in the past a petty pair near and not too far from the, We're in a space outlined with buildings filled with windows so we know people live there. Doors and entrances are easy to find. Often the distance we see is particularly interesting doorway. We enter it. And we approach it. We enter it. We find ourselves in an interior space filled with shops and restaurants. We walked through it to another room. We come out the other side on the left across the street through yet another little passage lined with shops down some steps to some columns and when we get to the columns we enter this extraordinary space of the Palais, where you're connected on the left from the urban architecture of the street. To the garden architecture of the. Of the, of the, of the Pali rail gardens. Now all of these places are very special to me. I'm sure each of you have a collection of very special spaces. Spaces in which there are windows that that provide a sense of security. At doors that welcome us porches that shelter us. Provide a third space, our cades that shelter us, facades that enlighten us. Landmarks that guide us in urban rooms that make us comfortable with one another. But we do know. Still, in spite of all of our efforts. That this is not necessarily the norm. That in spite of these wonderful places. That we treasure and hold. There are many other spaces. That. That don't have these qualities. Spaces that or rather harsh. Instead of windowed facades, blank walls. Instead of comfortable pedestrian space streets. Streets that become barriers between neighborhoods that become hostile for the environment. So the question then is How much of it is that way? And clearly, an enormous amount is left for us to be done. The urbanists have made great progress. Other people have made great progress. We have to ask how it happened. There have been endless debates at CNU about the sequence of events and attitudes that produce this, but I think there's 1 in particular. And that is as the city becomes more complicated. Requires more technology, more specialists. So that the city which is a whole is managed, designed, operated. By a series of specialists who tend to work in silos don't communicate with each other and they're kind of turf for who's going to win in the highway guys, of course, used to always win. I think we're winning that battle now. Also, there are crises. I wrote an article in 1970 for a book called The Growth of Cities and on housing. And I'm opening sentences that we're always in a crisis. There's a crisis of the month, a crisis of the year, housing crisis, environmental crisis. But we're still in crisis. And my concern is that we rushed to deal with the crisis. We forget about these more human qualities of urbanism that are the most important to us. So my suggestion is When you're embroiled in one of these situations, take a break, take a deep breath. Go to one of your favorite places. Take a pen for a walk. Explore it, discover it, and maybe, just maybe. A solution will come. That will make everything fit together. That is taking a pen for a walk. Thank you. Ray. That was great. I'm going to, I have a whole series of questions for you, but I'm going to encourage folks who are who are in attendance to also type in their questions if they have any in the in the Q&A not on the chat. It'll just make it easier to to read them. I have to tell you, as you were presenting, you know, they were. People saying hi. All the way from Greece and South Africa and Switzerland and India and First Nation lands in Canada and the 4 Corners in the middle of the US. Hey, great. Thank you. For telling me. So you have a very wide audience. Nice. Nice to see. I was struck by your journey and what made this book possible and in particular a couple of very fortuitous events this time. That struck me. One is of course your wife who as you describe it cheekily pulled out your sketchbook to show Roberto Rampolini at one of his exhibits in Urbano. He's the one who gave you the courage to begin to exhibit your drawings and that takes courage. And then of course the pet church is meeting with with Mark Appleton. But your book is a is beautiful but the process of drawing in terms of the discovery and the exploration is what is so interesting. I think to many of us and as you described it as well. So you mentioned to, to Rob and I when we had a talk before that it's difficult to do drawings and places you know well because you wanted to do drawings as a process of a discovery of a place. Whether it's the coherence of the urbanism, the harmony of the buildings, how they speak to each other, everything you just talked about now. So tell us how, or if your attention to detail. Has evolved over time. And I'm curious as to why you didn't, if you ever were tempted to include color. In your drawings. Yeah, well, those are 2 questions. The attention to detail is interesting. I think it depends on on the on the situation there sometimes I find myself drawing only the detail and then just blocking in everything else around it just and so people can imagine what's there. Because sometimes it's that critical detail that makes the whole space work. Particularly if it's in a sequence where you'll be focusing on that detail as you approach it. And the detail and richness of architecture is is so important and that's why I'm Hello, I like many, modernist buildings. As an urban environment, The lack of detail, graspable detail is one of the things that I think is a challenge for modern architects to be to be working with to find ways of solving it. Color is an interesting thing. I have experimented with color. And I felt that the line drawing was something that I could manage and manipulate. My wife as a pianist and she always said that the first step is mastering the notes and only after you've asked the notes can you make music because you mold it and shape it and form it. And so I find every time I would try to use color, although I have used it, but. I was spending so much time. Mastering the notes. That it was very hard to. Focus on the object. In this process of taking a pen for a line. I find if they, if you have too much construction, it gets in the way. You have to really separate yourself from the process of constructing something. To the process of following and exploring it. And so that's why I've stuck with pen and ink. Great. That makes sense. They say the same thing about learning classical architecture, which your wife says about piano they say about learning classical architecture before you go and break the rules. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's true. I'm sure you've inspired many people with your presentation today, but One particular point is how you speak about relaxing about sketching and drawing and I I was struck and I'm seeing this in the questions too by the variety of drawing techniques in your book. But the looseness and the sketchiness of them. Despite them being actually very detailed or some of them being detailed. So when do you consider them to be complete and how did you handle mistakes and how do you encourage in particular designers to start without trying to be perfectionist and just relax about the finished product? Yeah. Oh, that's the hardest part. When I work with students, That's the hardest part. People tend to freeze and and that's why the counter drawing is so useful because you relax. And forget about all of that. I. I, I did, I meant to mention Roberto Rompanelli, a marvelous, a painter in Milan was person who got me into doing exhibits. And the question of when something is finished. Came up and he addressed it. You said to me the party like best of my drawings were the ones that had unfinished parts. Hmm. So because the Message you're trying to get across is what you focus on. And I will go, I'll set it up and have it generally frame. But then. Concentrate on the thing that I think is most important about the drawing. And then when that's clear, the drawing's done. Because sometimes I say, oh, I should add these set of windows in here and this set of windows over there. And then the draw is pointless. It's like a photograph where you see everything. Whereas an interpretative drawer and explorers an exploratory drawing. It's what you've discovered. That you want to have come out. Yeah. Oh, that's a That makes sense. The. So I had a question and I'm seeing many people have similar questions along this line, which is You had mentioned to us as well that sometimes you did framework drawings and then you completed them afterwards. So can you maybe talk a little bit about that because people have questions about you know, if your rectangular sketches, did you use the viewfinder or cut out to determine how to crop them properly or did you just do it by eye? How did you set up the frame for your drawings and what was the process by which you started it or completed it. At the time or later. Almost entirely by eye. Walking into a space. Deciding what, what's important about it and whether it's this much of it or this much of it or this much of it. And then blocking out on the page just 3 or 4 simple lines that coincide with some element in the. Oh, the first thing is eye level. Excuse me. Always eye level. So that you're grounded. Okay. So that you, I mean, this is meant to be what I'm seeing. So you have to know. Where the eye is. And then the frame. And then 2 or 3 divisions as just basic guidelines. And then sometimes a couple, perspective lines going to a vanishing point. Not necessarily even where they're going to be. And then you begin the process of doing it. Sometimes Sometimes if it's a particularly difficult thing, I remember recently, 2,019, we were in Wells, England. Incredibly complicated facade. I couldn't figure out what to do. So I took a deep breath and I just started. Up one side. I'm over like this to do it. And in 10 min it was there very crude that it was all there. Which would have been impossible to do as a construction coming the other way. So that's, that's basically the process. Give you ever finished some back in your hotel room or wherever you were staying? Oh yes, okay, so let me come to that point. So, particularly as I got older, it was harder and harder to stay there for the whole drawing. The setup would take anywhere from 5 to 20 min or big drawing, maybe 30. And it would be there, but without emphasis. And then I, I photograph. The parts that I'm interested in. And then Okay, preferably in a cafe with a glass of wine. Finish it work further on the drawing or the hotel room or put it in a suitcase. And 6 months later, come back. Look at the photographs, look at the drawing and. And then work on it. And, and have it, have it come forward. And usually, Sometimes. And if we were staying in an apartment in the place I was drawing. I would tape them up on the wall and look at them and then pull one down periodically and start working on it so that I could do it. And in my office here at home, It takes them on the glass doors of the cabinet. You can just barely see. Behind the cap on the right side of the screen. So, you know, you mentioned this in your presentation that you were a firm that early on established the foundation to raise program funds for your employees and to study abroad and presumably to draw. I have a lovely collection here in the office of all the holiday cards by UDA and you know the most recent one has a drawing by, Paul Oscar guard and he's coming out with the book too. Yeah. So I'm just wondering, something that you particularly cultivated in your office or yeah tell us a little bit about that. Yes. Well, I want to first make a slide correction. Marilyn founded the foundation to raise funds for university. Okay. So it's at Carnegie Mellon, there's an architecture and a musician, to get a grant every year. And then we supported Hampton University study abroad program. But yes, there, first of all, it goes back to David Lewis, who died in 2020. He was deeply involved in the arts and believed that art and architecture were. Linked and that every good architect ever was a sunday painter because it's a way of honing one skills. And so we would occasionally have an, yeah, in drawing class and Eric OS, the current chairman, the UDA, has revived that tradition and they have drawing lunches and do sketches. So yes, absolutely. And one of the reasons for that, I'm meant to mention in the introduction is one of my reasons for doing the book is a I'd like to add my voice to those others who are advocating for the President of hand drawing in architectural education. It tends to be disappearing even when there are good drawing courses by 2 or 3 years later people aren't doing the drawings anymore. Doug Cooper, I was magnificent artist at Carnegie Mellon who teaches a dr. Just held a symposium. With specialists in cognitive skills. To explore. From a scientific standpoint, the benefits of drawing by hand as further making this case that it's something that should not disappear. Yeah, it's, and now you have to add AI to, to that artificial intelligence to that. Complexion of ways in which or complexity of ways in which drawings are to be generated best doubt or had a question which was exactly what you addressed, which is how how it's important to teach. Students to draw by hand, but I would think that there are a few universities that do that. Or not enough. Let's put it that way. So I have a couple more questions here that deal with how did you decide, Jared asked, how did you decide what details to include versus to exclude in each drawing. I'd imagine that many of the spaces were full of people, cars, signs, litter, etc. Well, exclusively on the buildings, it seemed. Yes, well, I guess it's because I'm I'm trying to understand. At the core, I'm trying to understand. What makes a good place? What makes good urbanism? What are the qualities? That are essential to creating the an environment that is going to be safe. Secure or people are going to be able to fulfill their aspirations where You're not afraid when you're in a company with strangers. You feel like you're part of a community. What are the qualities? In other words, what are the basic qualities of urbanism? And, therefore I'm, my focus is on What those qualities are. That's what I'm getting at with it. And I ask everybody to imagine the space is filled with people doing whatever they want them to do. Because it's the space I want to be understood. There are a series of drawings of the Palais Royale in Paris. We had a couple of exhibits there and the little books were sold in the book in the shops and bookstores around the Pali rail. And the owner of one of the shops said of the drawings that they they looked like, the, the Palais as it really was. Yeah. I don't know what that meant, but I was very struck with that. As a, as a comment. And just one more point on this. Had one exhibit in Italy. The. Italian art critic Flora Desantis talked about drawing and architects who do drawings. Drawings that some do to project a vision of the future others record the past others document and idea He thought that my drawings were looking to the past. Hmm. Nice one. To for division of the future. We're instructing which struck me as being exactly what I, I didn't know it. Yeah. When you said it, I thought, wow, that is what I'm doing. Very nice. So Pat Panel asks, what other characteristic light and weather of places. Did you look for certain? Times or did you look for the light at certain times of day? It was just whenever you were there. Yeah, not raining. Well, I would like to be comfortable. So. I do sometimes draw on the call. I, you know, it's interesting. But photographers will tell you that some photographers believe the best time to photograph buildings is without some. I I'm doing a drawing. I like it best. Let me throw it this way. For the initial reaction to a space, sunlight, sunlight, sunlight, color, warmth, all of that. Important. I may turn away from a place if it's not that I wouldn't be attracted to if it's not in if it's not sunny. So yes, that's important in the drawing of it. The, I like it when it changes when the sun goes away, comes back out again. Because you see it in different ways and it helps explain more about what the drawing what what the object is and what the place is that we're looking at. And The placing of it, Marilyn used to get very nervous because I used to have a cane that turned into a chair. And I would often put it down in the middle of the street with cars going by and draw from that spot. Because of course it was the only spot to capture the particular thing that I was interested in looking in. So I don't know whether that's a good answer to Pat's question or not, but. And then sometimes you just have to You just have to take whatever you can get. And that's very first experience when I was in Amsterdam, I only had a day and a half. And I was very excited about something and it was getting dark and I actually scribbled the sketches in in the dark. And then. Figure it out later on how they put together. They weren't very good drugs, but at least there was a record of what the message was. Well, you know, this leads me to my next question from An Ashworth, which says, do you have a particularly favorite set of drawings or drawings? And if so, why? Or not really. It's like picking a favorite child. No, I don't because the sequence of what I'm most interested, and I guess are the drawings of sequences where you see different. You see, you see the experience of moving through space. I don't have a single favorite drawing, although I'm Curiously attracted to that tiny little building in Botan, Switzerland with the ridiculous tower coming out of a tiny house. But. And probably the panorama of the Palais. Is the one I ended on as a favorite but there are lots of others so I again I like them as objects, but that wasn't what they were made for. They were made to explore and study and understand what it was. I'm, I'm seeing a lot of comments about how you're inspiring people to get back to sketching. It was just a lovely presentation. Laura, uter asks, were you were there themes or focuses? Retroactively or something you actively focused on in the moment when you were sketching. She seems to like the idea that you go out to sketch with a theme. And discover various interpretations of it. I would say both. I'd be intrigued with a place. Study a place from from a distance. And The interested in some particular aspect, possibly. Possibly a an arcade or a medieval town hall or a corner of a piazza. Or most recently my daughter Monica and I went to Vicenza a return visit for me to see how Palladios and Pilates and other Palladium buildings can lie in a main street. So that's there's a sort of theme there. How how does the form create an urban space? But then because this is a process of discovery, a new theme might come up. So moving from a sort of general idea. To a more specific one. What is the? What is the role of a keystone in an arch in a colony? What's the ratio between the columns or pillars of a colonnade. Is it a figure ground relationship? Or is it a much more open one? And what does it lead me to? What is at the end of the vista? What's the focus? What do you see? So, you know, your, your UDA crowd is on in their crew and they're all saying hi. They're all posting comments in the chat, but I'm going to ask you, I see Rob's arms. I know we're coming to the end, but, Lawrence Kamar has a question since Uri is on and you're on. Lawrence says as a graduate of Pittsburgh, I've always wished that C and you would happen at Carnegie Mellon using Pittsburgh as a lab. Have you and UDA ever considered hosting a congress there? I'm gonna second that, idea. It'd be lovely to have a CNU in Pittsburgh. So something to think about. Well, I think, I think it would. The, we had a board meeting there once. As close as we got. Yeah, well, it's a city worth visiting and Well, particularly now. I mean, it's it's always been fascinating and dynamic and energetic city, but even but now with the It's a it's going to a remarkable renaissance and the I've never I was there recently I've never seen it so alive, and energetic and the restored buildings are spectacular. And I have I have some done some drawings and maybe in another book I'll include those that show The 2 masterpieces, one of HH Richardson and one of Daniel Burnham across the street from each other talking to each other. Across different different totally different architectural languages but inter-relating to create and what I consider to be one of the most magical places in the country. So visit that at the Congress. Right. Good question. So I will say that this is going to be on YouTube and we are getting to a little bit, our point now actually, I don't know if there's any, questions one, one more, but, for those who have to go, this will be a YouTube posted within a day on the CNN website. So you can, check out this presentation again and raise drawings again and I wanted to thank everybody for coming. Thank you. So I'm gonna end with one question from the woman who is evidently from Greece, Anastasia, Mostly anonymous. Architecture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. These urban landscapes seem to articulate more harmoniously holes than modern architecture. Which is more or less indifferent to what is next to it. Could Professor Gindros comment on that and thank you for starting with images from the Greek islands? Well, I guess I would say amen. I think that's the challenge. Yeah. That modern, modern architects work today face. And at the risk of being too windy about this. I have a About it. And that is, we have to remember that modernist architecture was part of modernism, which was part of a social revolution. That was called for internationalism in which everything is the same. It was reacting to the terrible conditions of the traditional city and rejected the the traditional city Bruno Tout said, blow it up. Le Carbizier said, kill the corridor street, the very thing that we love most. So the architecture. In its in its form is fundamentally anti urban because they're conceived as objects seen in the round without detail that connects it to local place. That's the philosophy behind it. So we are now the inheritors of that legacy. Can modernist architecture and many people are doing this. I'm not I'm not saying it's it's not happening. It is happening. Modern modernist architects are beginning, not more than beginning, modernist architects are finding ways. Of creating a language within modernism or using modernism. That is more reflective of local conditions. I think it's a great challenge for, modernist architects and it's why in urban design. Course of a planning project to create sketches and images of an environment that has these holistic holistic qualities. And it's why I'm very dedicated to the ICA, which is keeping the candle alive for drawing and also for traditional architecture. I'm not advocating everyone becomes a traditional architecture. It's just that it seems to me These questions of style border on the religious and I'm all in favor of freedom of religion and for a long time. Traditional traditional architecture was the most persecuted of the cult. And now it's, particularly with the work of so many wonderful architects. It's become a very important factor in the creation of urbanism. I think the richest cities have everything. Have you, have you ever drawn, drawn any of these modernist places in the Even some of the more brutal ones, but to show it in the most possible. Flattering light I should say. Do you have do have you any of those? Hmm. Well, I did that. I did that once. For an article for places. Documenting a committee on design trip and My good great friend Don and Lyndon looked at the drawing and said, what terrible drawings. Yeah. Okay. So I guess I guess I'm not the person to do that a lot of people do it very well I don't do that. Keep doing what you do and it's it was encouraging to hear about the second book So. Yes, well, it's working with the island press. It continues the themes of the very end of this book. And it's working title is city building for people and we'll delve into some of these perception issues and social issues that are Alluded to, briefly in this talk. So, well, I want to thank you and I know I'm sure I'll turn it back over to Rob. It was a real treat, Ray. Thank you very much. Thank you, Marina. Thank you for the great, great discussion. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you, Ray, and, it's beautiful book and people will have a chance to see it and seeing you in Cincinnati and pick it up and hold it and hopefully take it home. And Marina, thank you so much. This has been a really nice, a really nice time. Everybody have a great day. Well, thank you very much. It's an important moment for me and I it's a kind of celebration. Thank you very much.