Urban sketch

drawn 2023-2025


In Japan, I sometimes sit on a quiet curb or temple bench, armed with a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil and a tiny balsa wood board, trying to catch bits of architecture before they slip away. It’s a way of understanding buildings—not through blueprints, but by tracing their lines slowly, by hand.

I’m especially fascinated by humble old private houses, which people have built and rebuilt themselves over the years. These homes often bend the rules of logic in the most delightful ways: staircases to nowhere, windows with no view, roofs stacked like improvised poetry. There’s a charming kind of spatial absurdity to them that makes me grin while I draw.

Then there are the temples—calm, intricate, and utterly intimidating. Traditional Japanese timber architecture is a marvel of precision and craft. Sometimes, I sit for an hour, pencil hovering, just trying to figure out where one beam ends and another begins. Drawing them feels like solving a puzzle with too many beautiful pieces—and it often leaves me wondering how on earth anyone ever managed to build the thing in the first place.