Winner, Registered Architect

Samuel Ringman, Architect and Illustrator, Ringman Design + Illustration, Dallas, TX

Orbital City/Space Elevator

Samuel Ringman’s sketch is just one of many the Dallas-based architect produces almost continuously. “I have stacks and stacks of sketchbooks and cocktail napkins with conceptual ideas like this one,” he says. Ringman earned his master’s in architecture at Texas A&M, working at HOK in Dallas before establishing his own firm dedicated to design and illustration. Some of his quick sketches—like “a tourist center at the edge of the known universe”—he goes on to develop into proper drawings, while many remain on a napkin. Even so, he says, “it’s fun to constantly record ideas.”

View the Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest main page.