a stroll through some old and new sketchbooks looking again at coffee shops
places in Boulder, Boston, Chicago and New Haven
sometimes a change of place can spur new thoughts and focused work. Rather than being distracting, there is nothing like a room full of strangers to help me concentrate. A quick sketch of just what is in front of you is a good warm up to imagining other spaces.
Below is a series of photos of some of the places I have lived. (Thanks to Google streetview for most of these). Not everyplace is there – a house in Louisville when we first moved there, an apartment in Venice, a couple of places in Lexington, Kentucky – are missing.
A question came up regarding masonry houses and the West. Most everything built here in Colorado for single-family residential work is wood frame construction with wood siding, even though the environment out here is not kind to wood (too much high-altitude sun and snow). I was wondering how common that was in other places and decided to take an albeit bias survey of a least the places I have lived.
Of the 20 places shown here, there are a couple of brick suburban houses in Louisville, KY; a brick dorm and some brick apartments in Lexington, KY; a couple of brick townhouses in Boston and a couple of brick houses in New Haven; some brick apartments and a converted storefront in Chicago. The lower images are from Colorado: a small frame house in Boulder, a log cabin in the mountains above Boulder, a wood-framed townhouse and then a partial brick suburban house in Boulder.
Maybe because I was obviously drawn to apartments in old, brick houses as a young adult, they’re heavily represented. But overall, I think my experience is probably not that different from many others, moving from suburbs to cities and back to suburbs again. It may be a regional expression or possibly a recognition of the age of building stock, but the paucity of masonry in the West is striking. The number of older, quality buildings in Colorado is pretty thin, but this may not be the region as much as the relative youth of most of the buildings here. I’m afraid in an society with increasing demands to make short-term capital, the idea of creating a building to last generations has simply died away. Even the older, brick suburban houses that I grew up in Louisville have a solidity and permanence that a wood-frame and sided house can not invoke. So I think looking at these images, it is not the region nor the suburban/urban/rural nature of the structure, but rather its date of construction that has most influenced the use of materials. Hopefully with a renewed interest in the environment, we can recognize that the most sustainable building is one that lasts the longest.
Below is a series of photos of some of the places I have lived. (Thanks to Google streetview for most of these). Not everyplace is there – a house in Louisville when we first moved there, an apartment in Venice, a couple of places in Lexington, Kentucky – are missing.
A question came up regarding masonry houses and the West. Most everything built here in Colorado for single-family residential work is wood frame construction with wood siding, even though the environment out here is not kind to wood (too much high-altitude sun and snow). I was wondering how common that was in other places and decided to take an albeit bias survey of a least the places I have lived.
Of the 20 places shown here, there are a couple of brick suburban houses in Louisville, KY; a brick dorm and some brick apartments in Lexington, KY; a couple of brick townhouses in Boston and a couple of brick houses in New Haven; some brick apartments and a converted storefront in Chicago. The lower images are from Colorado: a small frame house in Boulder, a log cabin in the mountains above Boulder, a wood-framed townhouse and then a partial brick suburban house in Boulder.
Maybe because I was obviously drawn to apartments in old, brick houses as a young adult, they’re heavily represented. But overall, I think my experience is probably not that different from many others, moving from suburbs to cities and back to suburbs again. It may be a regional expression or possibly a recognition of the age of building stock, but the paucity of masonry in the West is striking. The number of older, quality buildings in Colorado is pretty thin, but this may not be the region as much as the relative youth of most of the buildings here. I’m afraid in an society with increasing demands to make short-term capital, the idea of creating a building to last generations has simply died away. Even the older, brick suburban houses that I grew up in Louisville have a solidity and permanence that a wood-frame and sided house can not invoke. So I think looking at these images, it is not the region nor the suburban/urban/rural nature of the structure, but rather its date of construction that has most influenced the use of materials. Hopefully with a renewed interest in the environment, we can recognize that the most sustainable building is one that lasts the longest.
In really cold weather, the only place left to sketch is in coffee shops.
and the steamy heat fogs the windows and the only thing left to draw is the place itself.
These are from various sketchbooks over twenty years or so. Boston had a great many spots that were a nice respite from the damp and cold, Chicago a good number, but Boulder’s 40+ coffee shops must top the latte/capita list.
Do I have anything to say about the architecture or design of these places? Not really, I go there to take a break from it and do some mindless sketching.
This is a quick watercolor sketch I did last week of the Chicago skyline from the north side of Belmont Harbor.
this view is always interesting early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the sun is shining on either the left or right side of the buildings. The distant view is possible because of the distance that the harbor entrance creates, making a layer of Lincoln Park trees run along below the layer of tall buildings.
Different cities inspire people in different creative mediums. I think of New York as a writer’s town. By far the most sketching I have ever done was a two-year stint working in Boston.
Maybe the picturesque plazas and squares in Boston establish those views for sketching in a way that the grid of streets in New York and Chicago doesn’t allow.
The watercolor above is a bit unusual in that most of my looking around Chicago has been done with a camera. The hard, straight rationality of Chicago’s grid of streets and the regularity of office windows may lend itself more to the shifting light and perspective best captured on film.
I’ve now lived in Boulder longer than I did in Chicago. And so, Boulder’s medium of expression? I guess I’m still working on that.
a diversion from making buildings – more direct, more immediate, with the satisfaction of having made something
found object sculpture by mark gerwing, made around 1992, from stuff on the roof of my apartment in Boston
A dusk sketch of the bridge in the Public Garden, Boston. For about a year I walked to and from work through the Public Garden to my office in the Back Bay.
Watercolor sketch by Mark Gerwing
A quick lunch-time sketch looking down Boylston just down from Phillip Johnson’s entry to the Boston Public Library.
Sketch by Mark Gerwing, 1992.
Between undergrad at the College of Architecture at the University of Kentucky and grad school at Yale, I spent a couple of years living and working in Boston. I was attracted to the history of the place, a bit put-off by the unrelenting snobbishness.
For a while I lived on the poor side of Beacon Hill and walked down Charles Street and across the Public Garden to work in the Backbay.
This is a quick sketch of the Public Garden from the pond edge – unfinished on a cold day.
Watercolor sketch by Mark Gerwing, 1991.
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