Andrew Hoare

Hi, I am an architect and urban designer and have been practicing for 20 years. I studied in London, Portsmouth and Oxford. I have worked in both the public and private sectors.

When I was a kid I used to draw very precise representations of ships and aircraft which eventually led to building model kits of ship and aircraft. I suppose from a young age I loved putting something together and designing something that could be made. Perhaps the simplest definition of an architect? I was child of the Star Wars era and loved the films, characters, spaceships and worlds depicted in the films. The natural curiosity of a child led me to the Star Wars storeyboard illustrations by Joe Johnson. I did not know it at the time but I was learning how to depict things (spatially) in 3D. I loved how the illustrations engaged with people the told and sold ideas. Always wanted to do this with my ideas and buildings.

As my career in practice has developed I have become more aware of the ability of loose freehand sketching to engage clients. From a business point of view its much quicker and cheaper to use hand sketching to engage with clients than expensive and lengthy CGI graphics. That's not to say I don't use computer graphics. But I have realised that hand sketching seems to entice clients much quicker than CGI. It is also much more fun and rewarding to hand sketch and develop a design idea.

Needless to say I would love to get much better at hand sketching.