DRAWINGS A quick concept sketch made on the iPad while waiting for a train. I gave myself about 30 minutes to experiment with the first image that came to my mind. Sometimes I find it useful to make simple digital paintings like this as a «warm-up» before a session of work on a more detailed drawing or a series of concept sketches. Here are a few more sketches of some house ideas, as well as an idea for a megastructure. I have always primarily been an environment artist, but I also enjoy drawing other things (especially people). I am going to start working on a some new ideas for more substantial visual stories/graphic novels again when I do not have a lot of work to do on a house. I first began to draw some comics last year, when I became especially inspired by the manga «The Walking Man» by Jiro Taniguchi (first published 1992). My first attempts were not bad, but they were pretty bland (laughs). Now that I have experimented and failed a bit with the genre, I feel ready to make somet

DRAWINGS Various sketches of some house ideas. Drawn as usual on an iPad with Procreate app. There are few things that I enjoy more than coming up with ideas for small houses. Here are also a few interior images from an ongoing renovation of a small house that I am working on in Haugesund, Norway. At the moment we are testing out various material options, at the same time as we deal with the typical feedback from the municipality! These renders are made from a 3d-model that I export from Rhino to Blender. Blender is one of my favourite 3d-tools at the moment. With relatively simple settings in the Cycles engine, it is possible to produce results like this (even with simple photo textures). READING This week I finished reading «East of Eden» by John Steinbeck (1952). All in all, it was a solid book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The story was slightly less dramatic than expected, compared with my other favourite family saga novels («Independent People» by Halldór Laxness and my all-time fav

DRAWINGS An environment concept sketch from this week’s drawing practice. Ideas for environments often come to me spontaneously, and when one happens to appear I try to put down a rough sketch as soon as possible before it disappears completely from my mind. When I later have time, sometimes I complete a full painting. I am not entirely sure what this place was meant to be. A maze of concrete walls forms a series of small gardens that lie in a dilapidated state. A large greenhouse looms in the landscape in the distance. Its pristine condition and the plants within suggest that it is still in use, or perhaps in the process of becoming overgrown. The process of completing a painting like this from sketch to finished render takes me about 4 hours. Of course I have also found moments to do some simple pencil drawings in my sketchbook. REFLECTIONS No amount of anxiety really makes any tangible impact on the outcome of a situation. Most people have heard the phrase «We suffer more in imagina

Some recent drawings of random streets in Kyōto. Kyōto is one of my favourite cities. It is a wonderful eclectic mix of the old and the new, the traditional and the modern. Japanese urban streets have a fanstastic unique character. There are power lines criss-crossing everywhere, colourful signs, narrow alleys, bicycles, small houses and buildings in all different styles, and of course the majestic temples and their gardens. If you are lucky, you will also find a friendly cat (laughs). I could spend all day drawing Japanese streetscapes. Here is also an environment study of the shopping mall "SMS" in Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands. I have a special affinity for shopping malls (I worked in what was at the time the world's largest back in 2009-2010). When I first stumbled across this building while walking in Tórshavn in 2016, I was blown away by how cool it was. The concept is quite simple: seven volumes with pitched roofs are lined up along a rectangular central "indoor street". Despite

Recently I have found the time to make some watercolour drawings of zen gardens, inspired by the temple gardens of Kyōto. The Japanese-style garden is one of my favourite environments, and I have devoted a lot of time to studying its patterns and meaning. Musō Sōseki (1275-1351) was a well respected priest and garden master of the Kamakura period in ancient Japan (1185-1333), and he almost single-handedly elevated gardening to an art form by applying to it the aesthetic principles of Zen Buddhism. He wrote the following poem about garden design: Poem on Dry Mountain (A Zen Garden) A high mountain soars without a grain of dust a waterfall plunges without a drop of water Once or twice on an evening of moonlight in the wind this man here has been happy playing the game that suited him. Watercolour is a medium that is perfectly suited to the spirit of wabi sabi. All of these drawings are size A4. ***

It has been a while since I have written a longer article. This week I have some reflections on a classic but still very much relevant problem: beauty in the built environment. What makes a place beautiful is a question which the general public cares very much about, and which it seems like most professional designers want to avoid as much as possible! I am not sure when environmental design stopped being about having fun creating beautiful constructed environments. In this essay I argue that a mastery of the fundamentals of spatial design, a focus on craft and a rediscovery of play are three elements which can return us to the simple objective of creating beautiful places. ___________________ Beauty and ugliness in the constructed world The built environment is a constructed habitat, the result of the modification of original material resources into a spatial organization that is intended to support human existence. When considered in this way, a city itself becomes a complex artefact