21 August 2024
Judging the Drawing of the Year Award 2024
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Hayes Davidson is one of the world’s leading visualisation studios. Collaborative to our core, we partner with the most respected and visionary architects, developers, planners and agencies, to create exceptional ways to help them communicate their ideas and ambitions.
Our purpose is to help our clients visualise a better world, translating great design concepts into beautiful and compelling images, films and visual experiences that engage, inspire, and influence. We explore all the possibilities inherent in a brief, guiding a visual strategy for every stage of a project’s life.
Creative in both ideas and outputs, we are unconstrained by a house style, drawing on our experience to offer the most appropriate visual responses for an individual brief. We are passionate about democratising the built environment and are constantly developing new tools and techniques to support greater participation, inclusive decision making and informed debate.
Hayes Davidson offers wraparound consultancy and visualisation outputs, working in partnership with our clients to advise, guide and deliver the most compelling visuals and narratives to communicate a project.
Across planning, marketing, architectural competitions and design development, we have diverse, expertise within our team, including in-house app developers and real-time rendering experts. We also offer specialist experience in the following:
Creative strategy. Our starting point for any project is asking 'What if...?’ We work collaboratively with clients and design teams to unpick assumptions and workshop fresh ideas to offer unique and innovative solutions and create memorable artwork.
Planning. Pioneers in verified images, we built the methodology that underpins today’s industry standard. We have continued to innovate, combining rigour, precision and accuracy with creativity and new technology. Our specialist planning team, dedicated to analysing the potential visual impact of new city development, has an exceptional track record in supporting major planning applications with view-scoping and early-stage option testing.
Film. As expert storytellers, we use film to create distinctive, experiential project narratives for clients and brands. Our in-house team provides holistic ‘concept to completion’ support from creative strategy to brief refinement, options and storyboarding, art direction and location shoots, and animatics.
Hayes Davidson is a pioneer in visualisation, widely acknowledged as one of the founding forces of our industry. Today, our ensemble team of creative specialists continues to embody our original values of creativity, innovation and fresh thinking established over 30 years ago by our founder and industry leader Alan Davidson.
Our experience, working with the most creative and ambitious clients on some of the world’s most ground-breaking and iconic projects, has given us an unrivalled body of knowledge on which to draw. From BIM to the Metaverse, from the Shard to the Highline, our work over the last 30 years has engaged with the big built environment issues of the day, shaping our understanding and helping define our futures.
As an employee-owned business, teamwork and collaboration are at the heart of everything we do. We actively nurture a studio culture that results in the quality, ingenuity and exceptional service that our clients value. In a supportive, ego-free environment, we are free to explore ideas and focus on the most appropriate and creative solutions for each and every project.
Our people comprise a unique collection of skills and specialisms which we curate, project-by-project, to ensure our clients have the best possible team working alongside them. With an international team and a physical presence on 3 continents, we have fully embraced the potential of remote and hybrid working to offer our clients enhanced flexibility and responsiveness.
Our strong founding values mean that we are committed to a supportive, friendly and inclusive culture, and to helping each and every member of our team reach their full individual potential. For us, a dynamic and collaborative studio is one in which everybody is encouraged to contribute and participate. We like to give something back and support a number of charitable initiatives including Article 25, Open City’s Architecture in Schools programme and HD5K, our annual run to support the work of MNDA. Many of our activities are generated and championed by our team.
As an equal opportunities employer, we are developing EDI initiatives at both studio and industry level to support professional access and training. We also run a paid summer placement programme for interns keen to get their first taste of working on live projects. We promote a good work/life balance and support flexible working.
Our continued success is driven by our passion for creative collaboration, and our desire to expand our networks to embrace new disciplines, new thinking and new approaches. If, like us, you are passionate about what you do and would like to explore the potential of working together, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact our Creative Director David Bullock.
We value the skills and commitment of our team and provide exciting opportunities for personal and professional development at all career stages. We are always on the lookout for fresh perspectives and the next generation of ideas. Please note, as part of our commitment to EDI, Hayes Davidson operates a name-blind recruitment process.
We are always on the lookout for talented freelancers. If you share our passion for great architecture, art and technology, please send your CV and portfolio to hdrecruitment@hayesdavidson.com.
21 August 2024
Senior artist at Hayes Davidson and one of its illustrative leads, Sam Hudson talks about innovation in drawing and her recent experience as a judge for the Archisource Drawing of the Year Award.
At Hayes Davidson, we love to expand the horizons of our artistic expression and the potential of architectural visualisation, whether through new digital tools, inventive workflows, or explorations in illustrative techniques.
Year on year we see people pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved using both digital tools and hand drawing. Earlier this year I was delighted to be a judge for the Archisource Drawing of the Year, a fantastic celebration of the skills, creativity and innovation in the architectural community. It was inspiring to see the ways that modern technology is being integrated with traditional techniques, to produce works that were not only technically impressive but also artistically profound.
The competition is free to enter and gives everyone the opportunity to showcase their talent, regardless of their resources. That inclusive approach results in a richer and more diverse range of submissions, and encourages wider participation and appreciation of drawing in all its forms.
Along with my fellow judges - including Narinder Sagoo from Foster + Partners, Will Jefferies from RSHP, Agata Murasko from AHMM and Eliza Grosvenor from the London Festival of Architecture – we were looking for innovative and original concepts, impeccable execution and a visually stunning final product. It was an intense process. We meticulously evaluated more than 300 exceptional submissions, narrowed down from more than 6,000 entries. Each one was printed out and displayed to allow us to fully appreciate the intricate detail and creativity on show.
I really enjoyed the way that some people used their chosen media in an unexpected way to demonstrate new possibilities. My favourites in the digital drafting award were those which elevated static or technical CAD drawings by injecting elements of movement, whimsy or lifestyle to give them more narrative appeal. Being able to show not just buildings, but the essence of the spaces and the way they interact with their surroundings made the drawings more engaging and meaningful.
Our industry is seeing a rise in the use of AI artwork, so this competition was a great reminder of the role and value of human creativity, skill and personal expression in architectural illustration.