Master Organic Architecture Starting From Zero Skills | All Organic Architecture Concepts Explained — Freehand Architecture

1. The 5 types of buildings we are going to study

We can look at organic architecture as a complete my abstractised phenomenon where every building I unique and just an expression of organic architecture. Or we can see all the different subtle principles and patterns which help us visually break down and understand why the final image looks good.

There are 5 types of designs we are going to be looking at.

1. ‘Regular’ Organic Buildings

• Obvious visual language specific to this architecture style.
• You can experiment with different organic visual language.
• At this stage, do not worry about being right or wrong, just get your ideas out there.

2. Small scale pavilions

• These need to be simpler because they are small buildings, hence need an easy to read visual style.
• You can make the structure apparent.
• Use the horizon line to clear up the human scale. You don’t want these pavilions to look like simpler larger scale buildings.

3. Large scale futuristic buildings

• You can go for really weird, edgy, futuristic designs because of the scale (towers, floating cities, office buildings)
• The form can literally look like anything, even obvious stuff such as fruit, plants, etc.
• Show the huge scale, to justify the form.

4. Blob Architecture

• Contrast between the organic architecture and how it interacts with the surroundings.
• You can make it extra gooey, like it’s melting, again the secret is the contrast between the building and its surroundings.
• Large scale, made to push the limits.

5. Organic Design

• Both interior and product design work here.
• Simple organic shapes, just one material (usually glossy)
• Inspired by nature, look at plants, fruit, invertebrate animals.

2. How to understand natural concepts so you can use them for your organic architecture sketches

Understanding and integrating nature is one of the first things that come to mind when we think of organic, ‘inspired from nature etc’

Here are a couple of possibilities:

Fractal geometry. This gets you used to the idea that patterns in nature are what we want to mimic. You do not need to literally make a house in the shape of a cauliflower. The fractal principle implies you have reoccuring themes available at different scales.

Organic shapes such as orchids. These delicate flowers have their own geometry which can be used either for a tileable module for th e design or a starting point for the composition, that we can work on to expand.

Cloth folds — these could work very well as firm genea

3. How to feel and understand scale

Feeling/understanding scale is important in all architecture, in this case we are talking about architectural objects which can very easily be hard to read in terms of scale.

Ticking the box for scale will give your design more clarity.

There are two types of scale here: large and small.

Small scale relates to pavilions, hence small objects where the focus is the construction technique rather than detailing. You can show small scale by the structural system used, by adding benches and a general volumetric composition that is very easy to read.

Large scale is about mixing and matching different techniques.

1. Windows. These are the staple of communicating scale. Want to see how large a building is? Look at the windows.
2. The boldness of the visual language. If the compo si bold, chances are it is larger, hence more justified and looks more correct.

4. The three principles of how to draw and design Organic Architecture

1. Mark the entrance

Marking the entrance is about giving your building enough clarity so people could read the way the building works. So this the way you get in or out and

2. One material + glass

Usually you have 2 different materials and glass, but because of the weird shape for design you can stick to only one material, the shape would complicate the design too much.

3. Make the composition look like a volumetric intersection.

This is true for all architecture, regardless of style. ‘Architecture is inhabited sculpture’ is another way of seeing the concept in action. Volumetric drawings are easy to make look good and are more likely to be a good idea. Can a good idea be reversed engineered like this? Of course it can and of course it will get you better results than anything else.

5. Top architects and organic architecture references

There are several famous architects who’s work really defined the style of organic architecture. These are a mix of personal favorites and loteral inventors of the architecture style. By the way, conceptually you can take inspiration from any architect and any style, but these three are again ,however you turn things the most releevant

Gregg Lynn — futuristic, techy, parametric architecture style

Zaha hadid — unique architecture style

Jan kaplicky — mix of inspiration from nature and the futuristic vision of the 70s.

6. How not to make these buildings look weird

The main sticking point you will have when it comes to organic architecture sketching isn’t the fact that you will get intimidated or get writer’s block and not be able to produce anything. You will get past all of that and you will eventually start sketching… but the end result will look WEIRD!

The reason why this happens is because you still do not have a feel for the specific architectural language that organic architecture uses.

That’s why I want to stress this phenomenon out in advance so you know to expect it.

Let’s see what you can do to damage control all your sketches that look really weird and get them back on track and stop yourself from the pattern when it creeps up on you.

What you need to do is to consistently bring all your ideas to something architecturally relevant — the organic architecture seems like it is 100% creatve freedom, but you know that architecture and architectural sketching always deals with some form of constraint.

So, your buildings needs to tick the three essentials as they are definted by Vitruvius

we will be looking at the firmitas, utilitas, venustas principles of vitruvius

firmitas — structure, how the buildings stands

utilitas — utility, what happens on the inside of the building

venustas — the visual form, how it looks

For firmitas do your best to understand how the structure of the building would look — it most likely is made out of slabs and columns which need to work together — maybe this enables you to have a specific visual language, a bit more restrant one

Utilitas relates to the function that the building has, so imagine that behind the beautiful image there has to be something going on

Venustas — here students mess up because they stop and do not go all the way with their weird concepts. So weird is weird, but really weird can actually be a stroke of genius. Exaggerate the building — if it looks like a coliflower, then make sure you create some cuts to make it look like an extra juicy cauliflower

I created this study design for a floating pavilion and intentionately exaggerated it so it looks

7. How to use inspiration for your work

Sometimes inspiration is what you need. This is very different than the theory

As a last resort, if everything goes bad and all your sketches are a complete mess, well you can use inspiration to get you trying again.

Inspiration is an emotion, you look at something and you feel something about it.

Inspiration from nature

Have a look at the theory behind natural shapes again. These are going to help you get a starting point for your first sketch and depending on the size of the building you can use one or two principles.

Inspiration from famous architects

I rember always wanting to design something like Jan kaplicky did, hence I studied everything I could find about his work. Listen, nobody does this — nobody actually has the discipline to follow through with a study like this. Yes, most architects just stay by the side lines, do not jump into the action of drawing.

Inspiration from my and my students’ work

It took fcking ages to model the the floating pavilion, and it went through several iterations until it ended up looking like the exact mix of crazy and rationally justified.

Most of the work my students did is high quality, but not necessarily because of the quality, but because they stuck to the technique.

Final thoughts

One thing that will help you with organic architecture is that if you play all your cards right, if you do all the sketching while applying all the theory and everything, then you are really really close to uniqueness of expression. That is the good part — having all this theory helps you navigate organic architecture just like it would be another architecture style with its own rules.

The good part is that after you lived these rules you can start breaking them and you end up creating some really awesome looking concepts and ideas.

Here are a couple of videos you can study in order to get things to the next level.

Want to get the fundamentals sorted first and the see where you can take your organic architecture to the next level? Here is my free 5 day course called the five day intensive