Concept Technology Sketches, Systems and Devices

These are concept technology sketches from a Moleskine sketchbook, working design pages rather than finished illustration. They cover a closed-loop growing system that fuses a terrarium, an aquarium and a hydroponic bed, plus modular hardware fixings and a long run of electronic device and control-panel studies. Most pages carry handwritten labels and flow arrows, so they read as ideas being worked out on paper. The line is loose and exploratory, lighter than the finished ink work elsewhere in the book.

What the concept technology sketches show

The pages split into a few clear areas. The most developed is a self-sustaining ecosystem design, drawn as a full cross-section with every layer labelled. Around it sit smaller studies. Some work out modular joints and fixings. Others are electronic units with screens and dials, or isometric breakdowns of components. A few pages stay loose, closer to quick form-finding than finished drawing. Even the rough ones are annotated, which is what marks them as design work rather than sketches for their own sake.

The standout page is a vertical cross-section of a closed-loop growing system, labelled layer by layer. A terrarium sits at the top, an aquarium and water reservoir below it, then a hydroponic grow bed over a bio-active substrate. Arrows trace the circulation: a rain system mists from above, an aeration filter feeds the water, and a sump and pump move it back round. The handwritten notes track the nitrate, oxygen and CO2 cycle down one edge, with a compost stage at the base. It works as a self-sustaining vivarium, an aquaponic loop where fish, plants and substrate keep each other going. A second page reworks the same idea as a cylindrical hydroponic tower, stacked in layers from the planting medium down to the water.

Modular hardware and fixings

Several spreads are given over to hardware. Modular fixings and connectors are drawn from different angles, with notes on how parts clip and mount together. There are bracket joints, rail mounts and small fittings, the kind of detail that turns a loose concept into something buildable. These pages are the practical counterpart to the system diagrams. They are the parts that would actually hold a design together.

Electronic devices and control panels

Another set of pages studies electronic devices. Control panels carry screens, dials and rows of buttons, some with waveform and graph readouts sketched onto the displays. A few units look like instrument racks or AV equipment, drawn front-on with their controls laid out. The detail here is in the interface, where each control sits and what it might read, rather than in the outer shell.

Isometric component studies

Much of the book is drawn in isometric projection. Devices and parts are pulled apart into exploded views, so a single object reads as a stack of components rather than a sealed box. The angle suits design work, because it keeps proportions consistent and shows how pieces relate in space. It is the same isometric approach that runs through the architecture pages, used here on hardware instead of buildings.

Sketchbook and method

These are working pages from the same Moleskine sketchbook as the finished ink drawings, marked with the red ribbon and the OMEN bookmark in shot. The difference is intent. Where the finished pages are dense, resolved compositions, these are thinking on paper: lighter line, handwritten labels, arrows and corrections left visible. Keeping concept work in the same book means the systems and devices sketched here sit right next to the architecture they might belong to.

Medium: pen and pencil concept sketches in a Moleskine sketchbook, drawn across full spreads. Original scanned pages.