An active ArchDaily collaborator, architect and doctor Rogelio Ruiz Fernández, has emerged as a great enthusiast of cinema, architecture, cities and landscapes. He expresses his love for visual arts, architecture, and culture through his drawings. In these moments, he documents trips, his favorite locales, and project ideas that will later become works of architecture.
Below, Ruiz Fernandez explains his creative process and the importance of sketches in his work.
Danae Santibáñez: What inspires you to sketch/draw?
Rogelio Ruiz Fernández: Environments whispering you directions, perspective lines, light and also traces.
DS: How important is drawing in the process of creation?
RRF: To draw is to choose and evict lines with future possibilities. The Spanish philosopher [Jose] Ortega y Gasset said that 'A gothic cathedral is a trap armored by fantasy to catch the infinite, the swift beast of infiniteness.' So space is that swift beast and we try to manage the lasso, with quick initial sketches, to tame the wild horse, to place the saddle. Once we have the horse in the riding lodges, firmly tied, we brush him sweetly, bit by bit, till we get a thoroughbred. As far as we can, of course... it's the taming of the shrew.
DS: Which graphic references inspire you?
RRF: I love those pointed drawings by Le Corbusier, the purple watercolors by RCR, the stairs in the Doctor Arce house by Don Alejandro de la Sota, the sketches by Sverre Fehn, the clouds over the sea by [Jorn] Utzon which tell us so much with so little, also those graphic deliriums by [Alvaro] Siza (drawing and humming at a time).
DS: What do you use to draw?
RRF: Pencil, color pencils, ballpoint pen, pens, watercolors, markers, anything I can find. When something surprises me or an idea comes to my mind... any paper, from good ones to sketch paper, even wrapping paper I find in the studio, or the paper tablecloth that I pull out from under those quick meals, plat du jour, just so I can have something to come back to, to the studio. It's me trying to find that idea that makes us closer to the task of the contest...
DS: What would you like to draw and haven't? Why?
RRF: Italy is a bottomless pit, every time you travel, there's a new village to discover, its piazza. When you draw a location in Italy, you lose the notion of time. And, maybe in another life, in another epoch, you could have spent your whole destiny there...
