While technology is transforming architecture and design by automating many time-consuming and inefficient processes, is it also threatening traditional manual skills, like hand sketching, that have long been part of the designer’s toolkit?

RIBA HK Chair Dennis Ho is one industry leader who passionately believes that hand sketching should continue to play an essential role in modern design. The association is organising a major Hand Sketch Exhibition and Student Competition to stimulate interest and discussion about preserving the art of sketching and drawing.

“Architectural design has been transformed significantly with the recent advancement of digital tools,” Ho says. “However, as architects, we ought to be able to conceptualize and formulate our thoughts through simple drawings. Hand sketching has continued to be an essential tool in this process.”

Supported by the Hong Kong Design Centre, the RIBA Hong Kong Chapter Hand Sketch Exhibition and Student Competition will showcase hand sketches from a selection of notable architects as well as those of students from architecture schools in Hong Kong.

Ho says the initiative aims to “illustrate the diversity of thoughts, styles and creativity” at different stages of the design process. “It will also serve as inspirations for our current and future generations of architects and designers.”

One of Ho’s own sketches of a major conference and event hub in the Greater Bay Area showing a large, covered plaza with a dynamic roofscape (displayed above) will be part of the exhibition.

Works from established and emerging practices and individuals will be exhibited at the DX Design Hub, Sham Shui Po, from 20 December 2024 until 20 January 2025.

Earlier this month, RIBA HK hosted an exclusive talk by the curators of the RIBA Drawings and Archives Collections, Charles Hind and Valeria Carullo, at the same venue. Attendees enjoyed the opportunity to find out about the present and future of the RIBA drawings collection and the impact of digitalisation.

RIBA’s Chief Curator, Hind has previously worked the British Library, Sotheby’s and the publishers Macmillan where he was architectural editor. With colleagues Fiona Orsini and Susan Pugh, he recently co-authored The Architecture Drawing Book

Valeria Carullo is RIBA’s Photographs Curator. at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Originally trained as an architect, she has both studied and practiced photography, and regularly writes and lectures on both architectural and photographic subjects.

For more information about the Exhibition, check out the RIBA website here.