Edinburgh-based multidisciplinary designer Heather Fletcher combines precise hand-drawn line work with mid-century pattern and colour to translate the character of the built environment into something expressive and evolving.
Architecture is usually drawn to be accurate. Heather Fletcher draws it to be felt. Their mixed media illustrations of Edinburgh’s built environment begin with the structural logic of the buildings themselves, detailed and intricate line work that holds the form of a facade or a roofline, and then layer over it a looser visual language drawn from mid-century pattern making. The combination is the work’s defining quality: discipline and expressiveness held in the same image without either winning.
The practice grew from a sustained engagement with Edinburgh’s landmarks, the particular character of a city whose architecture accumulates across centuries and whose streets carry that weight visibly. But the series is now expanding beyond the city, moving into new locations and broader design contexts as a self-directed, evolving project. “I use mixed media to translate architecture into something expressive,” Fletcher says, and the direction of travel suggests that is less a description of a style than a methodology that can go anywhere.
The collage and mark-making elements that sit alongside the line work introduce colour and atmosphere in a way that purely technical architectural illustration cannot. The mid-century influence gives the work warmth and a graphic confidence that feels contemporary without being trend-led. Fletcher studied at The Glasgow School of Art and brings that training in multidisciplinary design to a practice that combines digital structure with physical making throughout.
Heather Fletcher is a multidisciplinary designer based in Edinburgh. Their evolving practice explores the built environment across locations and design contexts, and they are open to commissions and freelance work.
Mixed media architectural illustrations, ongoing. Artwork and photography: Heather Fletcher.
