Introduction
The term ‘Manual Architecture’ is any design that is hand-crafted on butter sheets with details and the user can understand it with a simple explanation, this is a preliminary process of design. As days passed, after the rise of AI and BIM, manual designs became just an introduction to a design. The quality and the beauty of manual architecture cannot be attained by any technology. Pen, pencils, sketches, and colors are something that make curious to the designer explore more ideas than in the software, as we cannot see the real-world quality on screen. Nothing can stop a designer from taking a break from sketching, but the loading, bugs splats errors that today’s world faces in day-to-day life can only reduce the quality of ideas and never have any intention to work for other options.
Caves to Paper
Manual architecture is the history of architecture, in the ancient days before the invention of paper, ancestors used caves and rocks to depict their ideology to the world, they started drafting whatever they saw, thinking in the caves which still exist, they have no idea to communicate their thoughts through speaking as they have no particular language, drafting became a language, they spoke, they shared their feelings through painting and drawing. Many monuments were built in the time of the kingdom, people had no technology to reflect their thoughts they simply drew a rough sketch on a single piece of paper and delivered the idea to implement. Manual Architecture is the starting of architecture, many monuments and buildings during BCE, for Example: The Great Indus Valley Civilization
People in the Indus Valley civilization apart from developing their households invented many things like pottery, sculpture, seals, artifacts, etc. They created their language in the caves and manually crafted and designed what they dreamt. How beautiful isn’t it? without any guidance and any kind of pressure only for their civilization human evolved their language and started designing their mind.
Beautiful and Personal
The beauty of manual architecture is greatly understood by famous architects, which is why they drafted every design manually rather than in software. Is that why they became a great architect isn’t?
The one who believes his thoughts can write, draft, sketch, paint, talk, inspire, and design. Everyone can sketch but not everyone can sketch what they dreamt! When the clients talk about what they dreamt about someday and what they like to happen, their thoughts, and their dreams, not only architects but every designer will listen to them but not everyone can understand them, even if they understand not everyone can reflect in the design. The moment the client leaves the office, the process starts, the notes they took turn into sketches, sketches become iterations, and the moment the architecture starts. When the paper is shown to the client the moment they are excited and shout in a hurry, “This is what I meant”, architecture is achieved. Human connection and communication are the basic requirements of any design from caves to paper.
Modernized machine days
In today’s world, everything has become easy and fast. Technology and software rule every industry. But art cannot be done by any machine it’s a language that human beings invented. Nowadays people are giving all their power to technology and sitting for the results to get, even if the results can be fast the quality and the hidden meanings will be lost due to the techniques and details that software does for more aesthetic. The high-end sci-fi renderings, detailed drawings, and real quick 3D models were all good and great to understand but there is no soul in that, there is no connection created with the clients and the design.
The AI and BIM tools are still tough for the people who have been drafting for years, the results could be easy but the process is not, the manual architecture is the only thing that even makes a client do the design.
Conclusion
As the manual architecture is slowly degrading, young designers are addicted and fully depend on laptops and screens to do design, which only affects their health mentally and physically. During drafting in a sheet, one can endure neck pain and shoulder pain but most designers will keep working till the satisfaction factor, but in these days students and designers easily get tired of looking at the screen for more than many hours even drawing a single wall, the exploration part became reduced and fully depend on the links and the models that twist the actual idea to its idealogy. This is not about to glorify the manual architecture, as the AI and BIM tools are slowly turning the ancestor’s language into machine language. The idealogy of manual architecture is very simple with a pen and paper and a dream, anywhere anytime in the world anybody can design,that is why the world got it architectural marvels all over world in ancient days.
Reference List:
- https://www.academia.edu/43507510/The_Power_of_Manual_Sketching_in_Design
- https://www.arch2o.com/why-do-architectural-sketches-still-matter-in-the-21st-century/
- https://parametric-architecture.com/drawing-in-architecture-not-so-lost-art-of-sketching/
