All about the sketch and the sketchbook, the sketch is here interpreted in two ways: As a material drawing executed by freehand, and as a tool for architectural enquiry and exploration. Etymologically originates to sketch from the Latin/ Greek “Schedi-azo, meaning to do a thing off-hand or on the spur of the moment, invent stories, improvise, or give free play to the imagination’” . The main objective of this course is therefor to enhance skills and knowledge concerning freehand drawing, and further, to develop the student´s understanding of thinking with and through the sketch as a tool and a personal medium for the generation and dissemination of architectural thought. As such is the sketch frequently described as a mode of thinking in action, and action as thinking.

Within architecture is the sketch commonly regarded as a means to an end that serves preliminary and preparatory purposes to further the development, of e.g. an architectural design. Put simply is a distinction often made between the mimetic sketch, which is about drawing and recording existing phenomena and events, and the conceptual sketch which most often is concerned with generating and testing ideas, in the various phases of an architectural design process. In reality are such distinctions blurred as the examinations and discussions of a selection of particular architectural practices, and texts concerning drawing by hand within architecture, intend to reveal and explore.

As the prevalence of the digital in visual production is overwhelming, remains the use of freehand drawing (most commonly the sketch), as the only non-digital graphic medium present in architecture today. This course refuses to take an antagonistic stance towards such digital means; rather it seeks to explore in what ways the freehand sketch may compliment these powerful tools, in order to shed light upon and render possible futures for the sketch. On this background will issues concerning the nature of non-digital drawing, such as materiality, the multisensory, gesture and facture, speed and resistance, vagueness, and ambivalence be addressed throughout the entire course.

Keywords: The freehand sketch, the sketchbook, the materials and techniques of tools and supports, representation, drawing within architectural design, visual communication.