Drawing Spotlight: Atelier Bow-Wow

If you’ve been a part of our Show It Better community, then you’re aware that we live by our motto of “An architect speaks with drawings”. This is why besides having a ton of tutorials that you can by the way check out here, we also have spaces in which we want to encourage all future architects and architects, to draw.

Here is this week’s drawing spotlight inspiration, Atelier Bow-Wow.

Atelier Bow-Wow

Atelier Bow-Wow is a Tokyo-based architecture firm, founded in 1992 by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima. The firm is well known for its domestic and cultural architecture and its research exploring the urban conditions of micro, and ad hoc architecture.

House and Atelier, Shinjuki, Japan

“…The illustrations in the book are detail drawings, which are made by our design process with added perspective. the drawings express the story of the design process. I really wanted to let architecture students know the fun of drawing.” Momoyo kaijima, interview at designboom, read it here.

Mini House

Atelier Bow-Wow works by their own theories, “Pet Architecture” is a term Atelier Bow-Wow uses for the buildings that have been squeezed into leftover urban spaces. Buildings with curious shapes and inventive solutions for windows, drainage, and air-conditioning often arise in these urban situations.

BMW Guggenheim Lab Mumbai Mumbai, India

“The use of vertical and horizontal perspectives, together with magnified construction details allows for a new way of observing architecture not only as an object, but within that single frame consisting of many spatial compositions, between rooms and components, between interiors and their adjacent exterior environments, between actions and locations, and ultimately between humans and the spaces they inhabit.”, Graphic Anatomy, Wikipedia

Koisuru-Buta Laboratory Katori, Japan

BMW Guggenheim Lab New York, New York, NY, United States

Micro Public Spaces, another theorie by Atelier Bow-Wow, based on devices proposed by Atelier Bow-Wow which create social platforms. Micro Public Space shows Atelier Bow-Wow’s way of thinking about the space.

Nora House, Sendai, Japan

“…Atelier Bow-Wow, has designed about twenty detached houses and holiday villas. They think that the characteres of these small houses are like nigiri (hand rolled sushi). The compact format of a nigiri allows the flavors of all kinds of fish to be compared, and differences in the taste, shape, color, and texture of materials are converted into pleasure and richness..” text from book Graphic Anatomy, by Atelier Bow-Wow, purchase it here.