Pencil first, for two weeks.

Each project begins with a sketchbook and a fixed rule: no computer drawings for the first two weeks. By the end of that period we usually have between forty and sixty plans and sections, most of them wrong, all of them quick.

The rule exists because the model rewards resolution too early. A drawn wall in a modeling program has a thickness, a material, and a cost, and once it has those it is hard to throw away. A pencil wall is a line.

Scale on the page.

We draw plans at 1:100 and details at 1:5, by hand, on tracing paper laid over the last version. Working in layers means the history of the idea stays visible, so an option abandoned on Tuesday can be recovered on Friday without redrawing it.

Dimensions go on the drawing from the first sheet. A sketch without numbers is a mood, and a mood cannot be checked against a stair riser or a door swing.

When the file opens.

The model begins once the plan has stopped moving, and from that point it is a record rather than a tool for thinking. Construction drawings, schedules, and coordination all live there, and they stay accurate because the arguments were settled on paper.

Clients receive both. The drawings explain the intent, and the model explains the building.