Today, when computer imagery is ubiquitous, there remain a number of contemporary architects and designers who persist in drawing interiors by hand. Their drawings enhance the designers’ powers of observation. They promote the understanding of scale and proportion.
The exhibition recently featured in The New York Times explores the timeless art of hand-drawn interiors and celebrates the creativity and skill of contemporary architects and designers who continue to keep this tradition alive. It focuses on hand drawings by 12 established and emerging New York-based architects and interior designers; Mita Corsini Bland, Marshall Brown, John and Christine Gachot, Elizabeth Graziolo, William Georgis of Georgis & Mirgorodsky, Nina Cooke John, Wendy Evans Joseph, Leyden Lewis, Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith/MOS, Gil Schafer with David Netto, Peter Pennoyer, and Douglas Wright. Drawings and design portfolios from the New York School of Interior Design Archives provide context for this contemporary work.
Design historians and curators Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins draw on their own experience witnessing the rise of CAD and the demise of hand rendering, to highlight this ongoing practice that reminds us of both the artisanry and ideation that the nearly wholesale adoption of CAD by the design industry has marginalized.
Hand renderings exert an impact on the client or viewer. Distinct from other types of interior design drawings—plans, sections, and linear elevations—renderings emphasize the depiction of three-dimensional form and space, often using color and emphasizing the effects of light.
More romantic than computer-generated images, hand renderings offer an opportunity to imagine oneself within the depicted interior by, in a sense, filling in the blanks. Renderings thus become powerful tools of persuasion used to promote designers’ ideas to clients, patrons, and the press. As such, renderings often serve as an indispensable step in the journey from concept to reality. At their best, renderings accomplish a magical sleight of hand, far surpassing mere visual documentation. Renderings, at once accurate and expressive, allow the viewer to convincingly imagine a world that does not yet exist.
NYSID Gallery
170 E. 70th Street, NYC
September 19, 2024–April 3, 2025
Monday-Saturday, 10am–6pm
Admission to the gallery is free and no reservation is needed. From December 23–January 20 and March 10-14 the gallery hours are 9–5 pm Monday–Friday and it will be closed on the weekends. The gallery is closed on November 27–December 1, December 24-January 1, January 20, February 17, and March 15.
Mita Corsini Bland
Hotel de Luzy, Schlumberger Residence, Paris, 2022
Valerian Rybar, designer
Watercolor on paper
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Mita Corsini Bland is an interior renderer who often works directly with restaurant and hotel developers. Since 1985 she also has collaborated with decorators including Miles Redd and Mario Buatta and private clients like Michael Bloomberg. In 2009 she illustrated a monograph by Susan Crater and Libby Cameron on the work of Sister Parish. Bland sees the drawings of Jeremiah Goodman as an inspiration. In a statement of her process, Bland noted that, “Drawing an interior is like figuring out a puzzle, once all the cross references of lines and shapes have been taken into account, it all comes together.
William Georgis
Pool Pavilion, Georgis Residence, Rancho Santa Fe, California, 2023
Prismacolor and ink on tracing paper
11 x 9 in.
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William Georgis, founder of the architectural and interior design firm Georgis & Mirgorodsky, has designed residences throughout the United States and the Caribbean as well as high-profile commercial spaces such as The Grill and The Pool restaurants in the Seagram Building on New York's Park Avenue. The firm often commissions artists to create works for its clients' interiors, and it has produced a line of furniture for Maison Gerard New York. This drawing exemplifies Georgis's flair for fanciful historically referential buildings.
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Interior designers John and Christine Gachot, heads of the firm GACHOT, specialize in residential and hospitality-industry work as well as the design of furniture and products. Among the firm's recent projects is the Shinola Hotel in Detroit. This drawing by John Gachot reflects the clean lines and minimalist palette of the firm's design work for the hotel.
John Gachot for GACHOT
Beer Hall, Shinola Hotel, Detroit, 2017
Graphite on tracing paper
18 × 28 in.
MOS Architects
Rug Study, 2023
Pencil on paper collage
17 × 22 in.
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Founding principals of MOS Architects, Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith pursue multiple disciplines, including architecture, exhibition design, and art installations, as well as designing furniture and objects. Sample and Meredith often develop ideas through drawing, collage, and synthesizing freehand drawing with computer-generated imagery. Additionally, the firm has produced a series of limited-edition books on conceptual architecture.
Elizabeth Graziolo
Entry Door, 200 East 75th Street, New York, 2023
Graphite on vellum
12 × 12 in.
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Elizabeth Graziolo and the members of her firm, Yellow House Architects, focus on residential and commercial commissions. The firm has recently completed townhouses and a mixed-use condominium in Manhattan, model units in the office-to-residential conversion of the Art Deco masterpiece, One Wall Street, and estates in the Midwest and Palm Beach. The firm also has renovated a house in Turks and Caicos.
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Drawing inspiration from the vernacular architecture of Jamaica, where she was born and raised, Nina Cooke John's work embraces residential architecture as well as public art installations. Her designs were included in "Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture," at the American Institute of Architects' Center for Architecture in New York.
Nina Cooke John
Color of Protest for Points of Action installation, 2020
Pencil and ink on paper notebook
5 ½2 × 15"
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Leyden Lewis is a designer of interiors and furniture, a professor at the New York School of Interior Design, and an artist who has exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His built work can be found in Brooklyn and Sag Harbor, as well as in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue. In this sketch of a kitchen in a residence on Carroll Street in Brooklyn, Lewis draws on classical modernism. To divide the kitchen and dining room, he uses draperies that can be pulled open to create one large space. In the dining area, a prominent chandelier adds an element of tradition and glamour.
Leyden Lewis
Dining Room with Kitchen beyond Draperies, Prospect Park Residence, Brooklyn, 2010
Ballpoint and felt-tip pen on paper
11 x 17 in.
Marshall Brown
Elements of an American House, 2019
Pencil and Prismacolor on Denril
753½ × 40¼ in.
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An architect and artist, Marshall Brown pursues an inter-disciplinary approach to design, whether focused on a single-family house or a vast urban scheme embracing skyscrapers and public space. His sketches on tracing paper, drawings on drafting vellum, and photo-collages that depict projects both real and visionary. Brown, who is a professor at Princeton University's School of Architecture, represented the United States at the Venice Architecture Biennale. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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Long known for its design of single-family residences, Peter Pennoyer Architects recently has expanded its practice to encompass skyscrapers, historic preservation projects, and museum exhibitions. The firm designed an Art Deco-inspired clock for New York's Moynihan Train Hall (2021) located within the former James Farley Post Office. A key to the firm's approach is the 10,000-volume architecture and design library housed within its offices; scholarship, including the study of traditional means of depicting architecture through hand drawings, and watercolor renderings, is a central source of inspiration.
Peter Pennoyer Architects
Living Room, Park Avenue Apartment, New York 2013
Genevieve Irwin, renderer
Watercolor and ink on watercolor paper
8 x 17 in.
Douglas Wright
Massing Study, House in Rhode Island, 2019
Watercolor on paper
11 x 14 in.
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Architect Douglas Wright interprets traditional American domestic architecture and landscape design. He encourages the members of his firm, including younger practitioners whose education and training commenced after computer-assisted rendering became the industry standard, to focus on hand drawing as an essential component of the design process. Drawings of historical landmarks, travel sketches, and even work produced during firm-sponsored life drawing sessions attest to Wright's belief in the power of hand drawing to hone observational skills.
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Architect Wendy Evans Joseph, the founder of Studio Joseph, has specialized in designing exhibitions for such institutions as the Museum of the City of New York and the Guggenheim Museum. Joseph created this drawing while designing Sculpting History. The exhibition displays the post-Civil War sculpture of Edward Valentine, which honored Confederate heroes and featured racist caricatures. To interpret Valentine's work, the firm veiled a wall of sculptures with a black scrim on which it projected a multi-media presentation of past and present racial issues.
Wendy Evans Joseph
View Toward Entry, Edward Valentine Sculpture Studio, Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia, 2024
Graphite pencil on paper
9 x 12 in.
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Gil Schafer, founder of the firm Schafer Buccellato, has designed and restored residences from New York to Montecito, California, in a crisp, elegant, and beautifully detailed neo-Colonial style. The firm also has transformed a former Hudson Valley dairy building into a family farm. For one of Schafer Buccellato's recent house commissions, Los Angeles-based designer David Netto provided this drawing, among many others, depicting furniture, decorative objects, and art works.
David Netto for Schafer Buccellato
Living Room, Residence in Southampton, New York, 2021
Pen and marker on paper
24 × 36 in.
Curators: Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins
Exhibition and publication design: Darling Green
Exhibition sponsor: Benjamin Moore