Work samples

  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation for our time.
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation for our time.

    Exercise in the creation of architectural ornamentation based on the theories of the late, Kent Bloomer.

  • ZooMorph House
    ZooMorph House

    A house daydreaming about becoming a cat.

  • Tower House
    Tower House

    "I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace." Gaston Bachelard [The Poetics of Space]

    Pen sketches of imaginary structures, houses, if you will. Because architecture is dwelling.

  • Publications
    Publications

    Sovich's publications include his work as Co-editor of T3XTURE, an international journal exploring ornament, texture, and pattern in an architecture of our time. 

    T3XTURE #4, was selected, in an open call, to be included in the "Reading Room" exhibit--part of the New Urban Challenges Festival created by Itinerant Office. The festival featured emerging architecture practices, innovative publications, and editorial projects through events at the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome.

    "...emerging publishing projects, developed in new and experimental forms, open unprecedented windows on the issues of the present and outline the potential "new urban challenges" of the future."

                               Cecilia Rosa, Il Giornale dell'Architettura.com

    He also published

    DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT : Tectonic Speculations

    In the world of architectural design, the relationship between drawing, computer modeling, and AI is complex-- is it progression or evolution? The earliest architectural drawings were drawn on the ground at the site. Pencil and watercolor drawings required a talent that favored one designer over another. Computer-aided drafting permitted an ease of creating repetition, simplifying the process. Recent innovations introducing artificial intelligence accelerate the process, effectively making hundreds of iterations possible in a short time span and allowing the designer to act as a curator. Yet the AI tool is still so new, how will it affect the practice?    The drawings, computer models, and models generated with text and image prompts in this book explore the interconnected nature of these processes.

About Randy

“I stepped out of my own existence and found myself.” ---Fernando Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet

________________________________________

I find myself stepping out of my professional existence and sketching and thinking about dwellings, some inspired by words or ideas, others stream-of-consciousness expressions. These are my oneiric houses—my houses of daydreams. Regardless of their proportion or scale, they are where my daydreams dwell. 

I draw with… more

Follies

imagining follies. These are follies in the sense of a " structure, such as a pavilion in a garden, that is chiefly decorative rather than practical in purpose." They include houses with feet and personalityanimal-like houses.

  • ZooMorph House
    ZooMorph House

    A house daydreaming about becoming a cat.

  • Model
    Model
  • Model
    Model
  • Model
    Model
  • Model
    Model
  • Model
    Model
  • Model
    Model
  • Model
    Model
  • zoomorph sketch
    zoomorph sketch

More Follies

imagining follies. These are follies in the sense of a " structure, such as a pavilion in a garden, that is chiefly decorative rather than practical in purpose." They include houses with feet and personalityanimal-like houses.

  • house of seven trumpets
    house of seven trumpets
  • house seven trumpets
    house seven trumpets
  • house of seven trumpets
    house of seven trumpets
  • house of seven trumpets
    house of seven trumpets
  • thing
    thing
  • thing
    thing
  • thing
    thing
  •   thing
    thing
  • sketch
    sketch
  • sketch
    sketch

Towers

—imagining towers. To paraphrase Gaston Bachelard, A [sketch] is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while [drawing]? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.


These sketches are six inches by six inches in size, drawn in a Fabriano Quadrato Artist's Journal with Birmingham Bourbon ink and Prismacolor highlights.

  • tower_0001
    tower_0001
  • tower_0002
    tower_0002
  • tower_005
    tower_005
  • tower_0012
    tower_0012
  • tower_0080
    tower_0080
  • tower_0012
    tower_0012
  • tower_0030
    tower_0030
  • Tower
    Tower
    Growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania, it was common to see a tower topped by an open flame. Rust-covered behemoths on the river's edge.
  • tower_0015
    tower_0015
  • House with tower
    House with tower

Gesture Art

When asked by a friend, "What is the art that is defined by the zeitgeist or spirit  of our age?" I thought of how Jackson Pollock and Brice Marden's art expressed the action and abstractions of Modernism. Our time is a digital age; an obsession with the small screen of the iPhone. It is ubiquitous and yet an interface that will be with us for maybe a short time until replaced with a new interface. I thought of David Hockney's embrace of the color copier and the ipod/ipad and thought of how one might embrace these commonly available technologies. “In his Retrospective, Hockney wrote that “New technologies have started revolutions that need not frighten us.” For Hockney, technology was never a threat to creativity because it could be “humanized by artists”. In fact, Hockney has continuously experimented with new kinds of everyday technologies, like the iPhone and iPad, and transformed them into devices of art creation for the modern age.” [https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-david-hockney/articles/david-hockney-xerox-prints]

The smartphone has trained us in a language of motions and gestures. Every day people use their fingers to swipe and shift across a small screen. This is what we see people do to check the news, look for companionship, or distract themselves for hours during the day. I posit these gestures at some level define our age.
I used these same gestures, quick simple swipes, and taps, to create a series of patterns on the iPhone screen using a sequence of drawing applications. I then processed the images through several filters. An application called "Trace" was used to draw the strokes. Then the images were opened and filtered multiple times using an application called "Prisma." (By filtering an image multiple times, it becomes more difficult to duplicate just as Hockney separated his first color copier images so they would require the color layers and precise order to be reproduced). The filters must be applied in a specific order for the same outcome. Finally, I transformed some into tiled patterns using Adobe, "Capture."

The patterns and forms from these gestural iPhone sketches also inspire my pursuit of a system of architectural ornamentation for our time.

  • Mazel Tov: a drip from above.
    Mazel Tov: a drip from above.
  • Ornamental Frieze Study
    Ornamental Frieze Study

    One of the patterns created for Issue #3: Pattern is Maddening!

  • Ornamental Frieze Study
    Ornamental Frieze Study
  • Ceiling pattern study
    Ceiling pattern study
  • Glass Panel Study insitu
    Glass Panel Study insitu
  • Glass Panel Study insitu
    Glass Panel Study insitu
  • fleurs-panel
    fleurs-panel
  • Ornamental Frieze Study
    Ornamental Frieze Study
  • Wall panel study
    Wall panel study
  • seed germ
    seed germ

Word Houses

imagining words that become houses. 

House Fly

 

Ski Lodge

  • House Flies Sketches
    House Flies Sketches
  • House Flies
    House Flies
  • House Flies
    House Flies
  • House Fly
    House Fly
  • Ski Lodge
    Ski Lodge
  • Ski Lodge
    Ski Lodge

Magritte's Holiday Canceled!

—obsessed with an iconic painting by Rene Magritte. The painting depicts a water glass on an umbrella. Magritte thought of the combination as a new object that simultaneously "wants and doesn't want water." An amused Hegel might take a holiday just considering it. Thus the name, "Hegel's Holiday."

Magritte's painting is an object with a simple non-contextural background. I explored placing the composition in a natural context with a horizon and setting sun. By exploring the context, I discovered ambiguities consistent with the spirit of Magritte. Is the umbrella sitting on the horizon? Is the glass sitting on the horizon? These representations, place Magritte's object in an ambiguous relationship with its context and with one another. Is the umbrella balancing on the moon or sitting on the horizon?  Then I moved on to explore inverting the two elements—effectively canceling the intended use of each—placing the glass upside down to prevent it from collecting water and flipping the umbrella to collect water rather than shed it.  The new object is thus canceled and Hegel's Holiday would certainly be canceled, too! 

These meditations on the Magritte painting, "Hegel's Holiday," led me to design the Hegel's Holiday House. A house that wants and does not want water. 

Might this amuse Magritte? Who knows, he may even Praise the Dialectic.

  • Hegel's Holiday House
    Hegel's Holiday House
  • Magritte's Holiday Cancelled!
    Magritte's Holiday Cancelled!
  • Magritte's Holiday Cancelled!
    Magritte's Holiday Cancelled!
  • Magritte's Holiday Cancelled!
    Magritte's Holiday Cancelled!
  • Meditations on Hegel's Holiday painting by Rene Magritte
    Meditations on "Hegel's Holiday" painting by Rene Magritte
  • Hegel's Vacation House
    Hegel's Vacation House

    Diagram of Elements: Roof-Rainwater Collector-Cistern-Enclosure

  • Hegel's Holiday House
    Hegel's Holiday House

    My obsession with "Hegel's Holiday" led to the design of this house—a house both wanting and not-wanting water. The contradiction would amuse Hegel and lead him to take a Holiday. Hegel might enjoy taking his holiday in this house. The large roof shelters the dwelling, while a funnel above it collects water into an internal cistern where it is stored and filtered for use.

  • Hegel's Holiday House
    Hegel's Holiday House
  • Hegel's Holiday House
    Hegel's Holiday House
  • Hegel's Holiday House
    Hegel's Holiday House

Publications:

—along with Craig Purcell and Lynda Burke, co-founding and co-editing the experimental, independent architectural journal T3XTURE. The journal creates literary connections with forty-five architects, artists, researchers, and others from the US, South America, Europe, Africa, India, and Asia. The “archizine” explores how aspects of architecture – texture, ornament, and pattern – missing from the modern architecture of the past century–connect architecture to people, place, and time. The original concept is inspired by the 1960s periodicals, Archigram, AD, Casabella, and Domus—launched in response to social, political, and artistic changes. 

The first five issues were: T3XTURE #1,  #2 "Ornament is Splendid",  #3 "Pattern is Maddening, " #4 "The Edge of Edge." and Issue #5, "Repose and Motion." Issue #6, Ornamenting Kosmos through Mythic Eyes" is forthcoming from Hapticity Press.

Besides editing and publishing, Randy created the publication's graphic design and layout. He also contributes critiques, think pieces, and illustrations to coincide with the the

 

In "Draw • Model • Prompt: Tectonic Speculations, Drawing, Modeling, and AI in Architectural Design" Sovich documents use of technology in the creative process including line drawing, computer-aided modeling, and AI.

  • Publications
    Publications

    Sovich's publications include his work as Co-editor of T3XTURE, an international journal exploring ornament, texture, and pattern in an architecture of our time. 

    He also published 

    DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT : Tectonic Speculations

    In the world of architectural design, the relationship between drawing, computer modeling, and AI is complex-- is it progression or evolution? The earliest architectural drawings were drawn on the ground at the site. Pencil and watercolor drawings required a talent that favored one designer over another. Computer-aided drafting permitted an ease of creating repetition, simplifying the process. Recent innovations introducing artificial intelligence accelerate the process, effectively making hundreds of iterations possible in a short time span and allowing the designer to act as a curator. Yet the AI tool is still so new, how will it affect the practice?    The drawings, computer models, and models generated with text and image prompts in this book explore the interconnected nature of these processes.

  • The Reading Room Exhibit, Itinerant Architecture, Royal Spanish Academy, Rome, Italy, 2022
    The Reading Room Exhibit, Itinerant Architecture, Royal Spanish Academy, Rome, Italy, 2022

    T3XTURE was selected, in an open call, to be included in the "Reading Room" exhibit--part of the New Urban Challenges Festival created by Itinerant Office. The festival featured emerging architecture practices, innovative publications, and editorial projects through events at the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome.

     

    "...emerging publishing projects, developed in new and experimental forms, open unprecedented windows on the issues of the present and outline the potential "new urban challenges" of the future."

    Cecilia Rosa, Il Giornale dell'Architettura.com

     

    Image removed.

  • Ornament is Splendid, Visit with Kent Bloomer Studio
    Ornament is Splendid, Visit with Kent Bloomer Studio

    T3XTURE #2 "Ornament is Splendid!" article by Sovich. Photos courtesy of Kent Bloomer Studio.

  • From One Liners
    From "One Liners"

    From the piece "One Liners" in "T3XTURE 2, Ornament is Splendid!," this spread is a portion of a critique of trendy late-twenty-first century architectural treatments–by generations of architects ignorant of the role of ornament in architecture.

  • T3XTURE 1 spread
    T3XTURE 1 spread

    In this think piece and illustrations by Randy, he imagines a new Baltimore housing model rising from repurposed rubble of tens of thousands of vacant brick row houses.

  • HACKED! a satirical critique by Randy Sovich
    HACKED! a satirical critique by Randy Sovich

    “HACKED!” from T3XTURE #3 Pattern is Maddening”—In this satire, Randy Sovich imagines patterns that were rejected in the editing process of the book, “A Pattern Language” and then lifted from the office trashcan and leaked by a disgruntled employee. Mimicking the language and layout of “A Pattern Language,” Sovich casts a gimlet eye on contemporary architects’ infatuation with formal and stylistic trends which bear no relation to the needs of the client, user, or occupant in these “scrapped” patterns.

  • spread from DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT
    spread from DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT
  • spread from DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT
    spread from DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT
  • spread from DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT
    spread from DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT

Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation of our time

imagining a system of architectural ornamentation for our time, influenced by conversations with the late Kent Bloomer, who was an advisor to our journal, T3XTURE.

This system of architectural ornamentation would have a "holder," i.e.,.. a building or a vessel. It has a decorative frame to support the figural ornaments. The figural ornament refers us back to the cosmos and nature and is super-added to dance on the decorative frame.

  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
  • Experiments in Architectural Ornamentation
    Experiments in Architectural Ornamentation
  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation

    Design for an urban 'rug' integrating follies, houses, and towers. The piece was printed and mounted on the sidewalk at the Southeast Community Development Center in Highlandtown.

  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation

    Study for two-dimensional ornamental pattern added to existing Baltimore rowhouse grouping.

  • Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation for our time.
    Pursuing a system of architectural ornamentation for our time.

Tectonic Explorations

—imagining and modeling the towers from my pen sketches in three dimensions with materials and lighting. These models are in DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT.

  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • tectonic
    tectonic
  • Hobby Houses
    Hobby Houses
  • tectonic
    tectonic