Insights
Reading a Site Before Drawing
No two sites ask for the same thing. Before a proposal is made a place is visited more than once, at different times, to understand how people move through it and where the light falls.
A public work has to hold its own among traffic, planting, buildings and weather. So the first drawings are less about the object and more about the setting: sight lines, approach, the height at which a passer-by meets the work, the way water and shadow will move across it.
Only once the site is understood does material come into it. The aim is a piece that looks as though it was always going to be there, so that its line and surface answer the ground it stands on rather than fighting it.