I was fortunate to intern for nearly two years at the home studio of Ignacio Mendaro Corsini in Madrid while completing my architecture degree. And I say fortunate because Ignacio is one of the few architects who still draws entirely by hand.

I had the privilege of assisting him as he sketched. My role involved crafting models, preparing competition and client presentations, and later, helping structure his website.

I still cherish those days deeply. Leaving university lectures only to continue learning beside him remains one of the most formative experiences of my career.

There was an undeniable familiarity to his home studio - one that quietly echoed my childhood. It reminded me of my father’s own workspace, and of those 1990s afternoons spent in my grandfather’s architectural studio, where blueprints still unfurled by hand, long before computers dominated the craft.

In Ignacio’s space, that same tactile tradition lived on: the scent of tracing paper, the weight of a drafting pencil, the quiet concentration of creation without screens. Perhaps that’s why it felt less like an internship and more like returning to a language I’d always known.