Drawings of people I know and people I don’t.
The London Underground is a pretty unpleasant place: too busy and too hot from from April to October. I avoid it when I can but you can’t use a Boris bike for every trip so to pass the time I’ve plucked up the courage to draw people i don’t know who’re sitting four feet away.
They get off, of course, so I’m quite often left with incomplete faces, but I quite like that anyway.
No negative reaction from any of the subjects so far.
Drawing people I know is more straightforward.
Innes waiting for Fraser to finish swimming.
Fraser & Innes watching football on Tv & Ipad.
Julie in Heathrow. Easier to draw people at events.
Watching the Proclaimers in London.
My mum, and others, celebrating 40 years since she became minister in Townhill Parish Church.
The traditional church hall cup of tea afterwards.
Peter Murray & Richard Rogers introducing the NLA’s exhibition on offsite manufacture in construction, which features a number of our projects.
The Cubs doing a craft project at their camp.
Kenneth Williamson guiding us through an illuminating talk on Edinburgh’s suburban railways. I live right on top of one, so i’m very interested.
At the RIBA Stirling Prize in the Roundhouse in Camden.
Fraser, Isla and Innes at the Armistice Memorial.
The kids watching the fireworks next door.
Listening to a moving talk from Hannah Graf, the UK’s highest ranking transgender army officer.
At Coram, for the launch of Cycle to Mipim 2019.
And finally, a small number of drawings focused on buildings, rather than people. This is Market Street with HTA Sketch Club.
At Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, a really beautiful place.
Thursday: an enjoyable evening looking at the sketches entered in the Denis Mason-Jones sketching competition, in Leeds.
I met Denis’s son and picked the winner.
Tuesday: speaking at the Residential Investment Conference 2015. It was held underground, and the lecture theatre style benches glowed red. I tried not to be too distracted.
Monday night: watching ideas for getting one million more homes into the outer London boroughs, Pecha Kucha style at the NLA.
Saturday: more relaxed time spent in Edinburgh.
In Cannes for MIPIM. It’s our market, condensed. When I headed out I thought it might be about pitching, but it’s not. It’s a chance to talk to the people who’s needs will shape our business. But we can’t do everything for everyone so the trick, I think, is to work out who to listen most closely to amongst the 20,000 voices. Getting to do this on a beach in the south of France is nice, but it doesn’t make it any easier.
Some of this information gets delivered quite formally.
Statistics on places: design, value, people, quality, crisis etc. I imagined I might be sketching the beach and the boats, but there isn’t any time.
Instead I’m listening to what other people think the future holds, and trying to work out who’s right.
Most of the time it’s less formal discussion: breakfasts, lunches, afternoon beers, dinners, late night pints. I’m not sure copious coffee and alcohol consumption helps with clarity but it was my first time, so I went along with it.On the plane home, I see I’m not alone in finding it exhausting.
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