For a seemingly anachronistic art form in these digital times, it is surprising that a number of architecture firms sent entries from many employees. This year RECORD decided to give the firm with the most memorable sketches its own award category, “Best Firm Submissions.” Cooper Carry, based in Alexandria, VA, was awarded our special firm award, submitting sketches from over a dozen employees. The firm also had its own internal judging before submitting their work to RECORD.

View the Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest main page.

RECORD solicited cocktail-napkin sketches from two well-known architects, just to show that leaders in the field still draw. Eugene Kohn, chairman of Kohn Pedersen Fox, largely submitted sketches of various New York cityscapes, while Albuquerque-based Antoine Predock drew various iconic buildings, including his own.

View the Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest main page.

RECORD hosted a mini Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest in May at the AIA Convention in Washington, D.C. We received submissions from 30 entrants and selected one winner: Los Angeles-based designer Alvin Oei of Randall/Baylon Architects.

View the Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest main page.

Gregory Klosowski

After spending nearly two decades working in San Francisco, Gregory Klosowski, 42, moved back to his native Chicago this year to become a senior project architect at Pappageorge Haymes Partners. When he arrived, he found his favorite vista unchanged—a spot along Wacker Drive where the Tribune Tower and the Wrigley Building frame the Chicago River. “The word ‘amaranthine’ in the title means eternally beautiful and unfading,” Klosowski says of his en plein air sketch. “The Chicago skyline changed in the years I was away, but seeing that this view was the same was reassuring.”

Harold Vinasco

While aboard a recent flight, Harold Vinasco, 56, sketched a rich streetscape of balconies, colonial-style roofs and flowers—recollections of his hometown of Cali, Colombia. “There are a lot of places in Colombia where you can find this kind of image,” Vinasco, a designer at Beame Architectural Partnership in Miami, says of his three-minute sketch. While he has used programs like autoCAD since the late 1980s, Vinasco says that a sketch always serves as his starting point. “I am so happy to do it, because my work is also my hobby,” he said—“in the train, on the plane, everywhere.”  

Callison

Our jury was impressed with the overall quality of submissions from designers from Callison's Seattle office.   

Submissions from Registered Architects

Though they didn't win the top prize, these napkins were nevertheless noteworthy. 

Submissions from Non-Registered Designers.

Though they didn't win the top prize, these napkins were nevertheless noteworthy.

David Fox

David Fox has devoted his career to the study of architectural drawing. He has taught at the University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design for 20 years and recently completed a Fulbright Scholarship in Krakow, Poland, where he focused on the relationship between analog drawing, digital design, and architectural pedagogy. His winning sketch was partially inspired by his experience designing a chapel as an employee in the practice of E. Fay Jones. However, the drawing also represents Fox’s belief that sketching and developing an architectural concept must come before computer modeling. “The poetry cannot be an afterthought or occur at a midpoint,” he tells his students. “It must originate from inception.”

Roland Escalona

Roland Escalona’s sketch was, without exaggeration, a lifetime in the making. “I grew up in Manila, the Philippines,” said Escalona, “where shanty housing is part of the landscape.” The memory of that landscape stayed with the young architect and was the subject of his B.Arch. senior thesis at the University of Southern California. The idea for the sketch struck him when he came across his old thesis and reimagined that dense landscape using the meticulous precision of photographic mosaic, one of his artistic hobbies. Escalona recounts that “the image of shanty living was stuck in my mind.” But now that landscape has been distilled by hand for us to interpret.