In the second part of this series, we’ve reached out to more architects for their sketches and thoughts on work and daily life during this period of lockdown. Check out the first one here.

Isolation: Clavis lux est (The key is light) by Chris Dyson, Chris Dyson Architects
These are strange times for a collaborative profession! My wife Sarah and I believe we have had the virus and will never know until tested, so we have been careful.

My routine is an early rise for 7am yoga and some weights, to save my body from shrivelling up. Walk Milo the dog and then walk one street over to Fashion Street Studios, which are closed but where I spend the morning alone, checking the machines are all working for the 16 home workers (all working very efficiently I might add!)

We were set up for this and are managing quite well as a team but I worry that some of the younger members of the office have lost their ‘buddies/mentors’ and may feel a little less connected and more isolated. We all meet regularly online, though, and do Gin Fridays on Zoom at the end of the week.

I get a lot done as long as I don’t panic, steadily working through my lists for the day with the usual interruptions. At the moment I’m preparing a pre application for two wonderfully historic buildings in Lincoln’s Inn and the first task has been carrying out a thorough research paper on the history of these buildings, which involved the work of many names such as Inigo Jones, Sir John Soane, John Ware, Nicholas Stone to name a few…

The afternoons are spent at home working in my study, seen here, which is a more reflective and quiet space that allows time for sketching and free thinking. I’m putting into plan projects that would normally take longer to think about, such as a design brief for an Eco-House in Epping Forest.

I can only imagine how architects felt during the last war – at least we have the technology and we are not at war and can still be creative! The world may come out of this a much kinder and more cooperative place, who knows?! For now, I look forward to my new turbo trainer and laptop, arriving someday soon.

Fiona Naylor, Johnson Naylor
Simple tools that really work help with small pleasures – so important right now. By the way, always pour clockwise!

Ben Ridley, Architecture for London
An advantage of working from home: a pre-warmed keyboard courtesy of Astrid the cat.

A disadvantage of working from home: when he sits on it at night, waking the computer (and us) from sleep mode.

Carl Trenfield, Carl Trenfield Architects
In these times of enforced self-isolation, I undertook a quick study of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, as originally drawn by Willey Reveley – here adapted and inspired by these unusual times, to allow the two-metre distancing rule whilst maintaining absolute line of sight and adopting the Covid-19 spore profile.

I’m naming it the Covidicon. There are a few variants of this – pure vectors or as if drawn. I enjoy the ambiguity of that which has been added and that which was pre-existing.

Separately, my sketch book has been increasingly filled with chaos: themes around solid and void, light and dark, compression and release. It’s part prompted by an upcoming project where we are to work with chalk and play with directed weathering, whilst also exploring the creation of form as if both ruinous and rising from the cliff – that starkness of the white is hypnotic.

By inking or using permanent marker, subsequent pages allow for a kind of archaeological opportunity – with the sketch but also as a concept about how you might occupy a previously developed site, working with prior foundations as if scarred ruins.

Harry Thomson, Studio Shaw
I typically never have breakfast at home. I cycle into the office and either pick something up on the way in or eat later that day. These are not typical times however, and we are now in our homes…all of the time. I have found this both the most difficult and most enjoyable aspect of our current situation. At home I am now experiencing how the light changes throughout the day, hearing new noises and seeing our small garden burst into life. 

As a way of structuring the day, I have found that routine has become more important than ever. Making a coffee is a very simple but satisfying process. I now have an hour or so before work to sit with a coffee thinking and looking and sometimes even drawing. I will try and hold onto this new routine when normal life resumes and we all start commuting again.  

I drew this at 7:30 am one morning sitting at my kitchen table looking out into the garden. I was thinking about routine and how seemingly mundane tasks now feel really important. Read left to right, this sketch depicts the simple process of making a cup of coffee.