Looking at one of his sculptures from a single perspective, it would be easy to mistake them for 2D drawings on a flat surface. After all, architects have a tendency to layer lines as they solve design problems in realtime, resulting in a sketchy quality in their “working” drawings. They often also sketch buildings with overlapping lines, leaving structural intersections seeming fluid and unfinished.

Spanish artist David Moreno sculpts along similar lines, using thin strands to model out architectural creations that appear almost like two-dimensional art on a page.

Strung together with slim piano wire, he builds up his pieces from steel rods that form outlines of buildings as well as architectural details.

There is rarely a clear starting point, and one could imagine any of these constructions being half-finished or, conversely, well past their natural end point.

In the end, there is a kind of gestural quality and uncertainty to each piece, something that architect’s often intentionally cultivate — by creating overlaps and ambiguities, they can allow observers (and clients) to read their own vision into it.

Moreno has created and iterated on these kinds of three-dimensional sketch sculptures for a long time, but has also worked on large-scale installations and furniture-based works. You can see more, too, on his Behance page.

A clever team of architects in Oslo, Norway, mocks up full-size blueprints using a shared flat concrete courtyard behind their office, allowing colleagues and clients alike to test-drive designs in person during the schematic and design development process.

Vardehaugen Arkitekter has used white tape to draft everything from houses and cabins to offices and pavilions, sharing the results on Instagram with enthusiastic fans and followers.

Like their architecture in general, the white-on-dark drawings are minimalist (in terms of designs and colors) but effective, using standard blueprinting conventions legible to professionals and laypeople alike.

The movie Dogville comes to mind, its props simple and its rooms mapped out on the floor, defined by invisible walls and doors left largely to the viewer’s imagination and extrapolation of a basic barebones blueprint.

In a quest to evoke a faster fix from city authorities, a lone street artist going by the name Wanksy is highlighting holes in the ground with (NSFW) spray paintings sharing one thing in common: the rough but instantly recognizable shape of a phallus.

Like Hanksy, Wanksy is a play on Banksy, a world-renowned art activist. Found all around Manchester, England, Wanksy’s penis-shaped pothole sketches are perhaps crude but they serve more than one point. First, they provoke public calls to officials to clean them up while also filling in the holes. Second, but equally important for the safety of the artist, the phallus represents an easy-to-draw figure that can be sketched quickly with less risk of getting hit bye a vehicle. Third, the rough markings serve as interim warnings to drivers who might not see a water-filled hole at night.

Though the paint washes away over time, making these temporary, this response from a local council member shows that the powers that be are not particularly amused: “Has this person, for just one second, considered how families with young children must feel when they are confronted with these obscene symbols as they walk to school? Not only is this vandalism, but it’s also counter-productive. Every penny that we have to spend cleaning off this graffiti is a penny less that we have to spend on actually repairing the potholes.”

The notion of highlighting or filling in potholes by activists takes many forms beyond this novel approach, including a Chicago tile artist who fills in holes with mosaics, a guerrilla gardener who plants pansies in these street voids and even a pothole robin hood who steals asphalt from the city to fill in gaps with his own work and time. In the grand scheme, one could argue that this newest contributor is somewhat juvenile, but if it solves a real-world urban infrastructure problem, it is hard not to smile at least a little at his attempt to lighten the mood while fixing city streets.

For years, this graffiti calligrapher has made his mark around New York City, but some of his best work is reserved for special (and somewhat unpredictable) occasions, relying on seasonal snowfall.

Known for his interior and exterior calligraphic murals as well as his signature snow pieces, Faust notes that virtually “everyone has an affinity for writing in the snow as a child. When most people grow up they lose the urge. I guess I just haven’t been able to shake it.”

As with other forms of reverse graffiti, his snowy script is ultimately temporary and removes material that would be wiped and swiped away by brushes or wipers, thus leaving no lasting impact or damage.

Some of his messages speak to the season (of snows and ice) while others are simply signatures left on the hood, trunk, windshield or window of a car as a simple surprise to brighten the dark winter days of passers by.

Made for those who like to color outside lines and jot outside boxes, each page of this bound pad provides a unique source of inspiration and different framework for drawing, sketching and writing out ideas.

Available from tmsprl, the minimalist brown-bound notebooks show traditional lines on the front and back but playing on and warping the horizontal blue-on-white (with red verticals) convention within.

Some pages sport twisting topographic lines while others thin, thicken, curl, loop, twist and spiral, encouraging the user to put pencil or pen to paper in different ways throughout.

The deeper you delve the more surprises you find, starting with upward-swooping lines and culminating in crazy abstract patterns and strangely whimsical shapes.

A few notes from its creator: “If you’re in search of inspiration, this notepad might help. Second edition. 48 pages, dimensions 165 x 210 mm, softcover. Printed on sustainable paper in Belgium.”