A sea of paper: Níall McLaughlin on practice, process, and sketching collectively

I normally work amid a sea of paper sketches of different kinds. I like to spread stuff out on the desk. It can become a bit chaotic. Most of the time, I work with my team in a very collaborative set-up where everyone is taking turns with the pen and working away on sketching paper. These days, we move pretty fluidly between digital tools, like Rhino or SketchUp, and drawing freehand. We have a big screen at one end of the table and the sketching paper piles into big drifts at the other end. We don’t think of these drawings as something we would keep. They are just natural extensions of the thought process, useful for materialising an idea in the moment.

Sometimes, less frequently, I work by myself and the character of the task is more introspective. I might sit for hours drawing and redrawing an idea hundreds of times. Usually when I am doing this I am also reading, so I am pulling my mind back and forth from the task: concentration and respite in steady cycles. 

When I am reading about architecture or visiting buildings, I tend to draw quite analytically and meticulously. I am less interested in creating a record of what I observe, than training my mind in that instant to see the thing more carefully. I might, for instance, draw a building as you would build it or as it might weather over time. The performative nature of drawing has more to say about the underlying nature of a building than any image of it would. This stock of commonplace sketches in my notebooks becomes a resource when I am designing and, invariably, they will be pulled out and added to the general chaos of my desk when I am immersed. 

I am always a little anxious about the objectification of design sketches. Any self-consciousness in the act of designing creates a barrier in the process. That is why we often throw our sketches away. A sketch is the materialisation of an emerging idea which, once created, opens up other possible ideas. This can happen in an introspective setting, but also in a communal or collaborative situation.

These days we meet on Zoom and use the Annotate tool all day. It is great because it defies any self-conscious virtuosity. I find myself tracing off the screen with thin paper and a fine pen. I sketch away for a few minutes, photograph the sketch with my phone and screen-share it back into the Zoom conversation. So, the freehand sketch, the Rhino model, the Zoom Annotate function, the screen trace and the iPhone photo are all involved in a little dance together around the subject of the design itself.