“Bic / Bic / Bic - Bic Cristal - Nobody draws just to draw.
Drawing is not a hobby, drawing, in architecture, means having to solve a problem.
Architects draw for duty, not for pleasure; like in the School of Fine Arts, where there was a timetable, a model, a professor, and we pupils closed in between the easels. To draw, in Architecture, is to race against time, to take what is at hand: a box of matches, a tram ticket, an upturned pack of cigarettes, air sickness bags, or our notebook, which must not have valuable paper.
The paper, if it is of good quality, thick, intimidates us, we perform ceremonies, inhibits us from gestures, and it is not for the weight of the paper that we pass on to posterity.
Even the pen must be trivial, light, anonymous and available in every corner of the city.
A branded pen, of good design, distracts us from the lens, distracts us because we feel its weight, the quality that prevents it from becoming clogged even if the gestures are frenetic.
Even drawing with a pencil may not be the best solution. When we see that we are getting lackluster results, we could indulge in lovely textures, hint at nuances of graphite and delay the indelible: "The Construction of Form". (As for adding colors, then, not even talking about it).
I almost always draw and write with a Bic Cristal, black, the same for forty years. It does not spread, the stroke does not vary, it writes even if you forget it open, it is always available in any shop.
When it finishes, it becomes virgin again, transparent, and there are 14.5 cm of plastic to throw away. With half a euro we can start splashing again, until the next one and so on… "
Eduardo Souto de Moura
