William Block Art & Architecture
Trained as an architect, William develops architectural and urban design concepts through drawing, exploring how people experience and feel in the places they inhabit. His work imagines buildings, streets and public spaces as settings for everyday life—as stage sets that enrich our experiences and enhance the places we live, work and gather.
Concepts, Illustrations & Animated Stories
Developing and designing concepts for new places, he works with city agencies, architects, urban designers and entertainment companies. He brings ideas to life through architectural drawings and illustrations, helping clients explore and communicate the character and experience of a place. He also illustrates existing cities, towns and buildings, and creates animated stories about place using his drawings.
Concepts of Place
Here are some architectural townscapes full of life and character. William visualizes concepts for new places working with architects, city agencies and entertainment companies. His work explores how new buildings, streets and public spaces can come together to as vibrant places that bring new life to historic settings.
Combining hand drawing and digital techniques, he creates evocative architectural illustrations that take people on journeys through places yet to be built. His drawings convey the character and experience of a place, inviting viewers to imagine themselves within it and become part of the design process.
City, Town & Architectural Illustrations
William Block illustrates existing cities, towns, historic villages and buildings in America and Europe and beyond. Having lived in and drawn the hill towns of Southern France and the villages of Somerset, England, he brings a personal understanding of the character and history of places.
His series of architectural illustrations and animations of great railway stations from around the world explores how cities and their buildings grow and evolve over time. Through drawings and animated films, he brings the stories of these places to life, engaging audiences with their architecture, history and changing urban landscapes.
Animated Stories: Bringing Places to Life
Here are some animated films that bring places and ideas to life through hand-drawn illustrations, color, sound and movement. Combining architecture, storytelling and animation, he takes audiences on journeys that help them see, feel and experience a place.
His animated stories can introduce a new architectural or urban design project, reveal how a city or town has evolved over time, or imagine how a place might change in the future. By connecting past, present and future, these films make complex ideas accessible and engaging, helping architects, city agencies, developers and cultural organizations communicate their vision.
Whether used to explain, educate or inspire, animated stories offer a lively and memorable way to engage an audience with the places around us.
William Block — Architect & Concept Designer
William Block is an architect, artist and concept designer whose work spans America and Europe. He has collaborated with architectural and urban design firms, consulted with cities in the United States and France on townscape concepts, and developed places and stories with entertainment companies including Walt Disney Imagineering and Universal Studios.
His design process begins with hand drawing. He then uses digital tools to model, explore form and study scale before returning to drawing to develop the character and experience of a place. This combination of architectural thinking, digital modeling and illustration allows him to explore ideas at the early stages of concept development, when a project’s identity and possibilities are still taking shape.
His drawings are more than presentations of a design. They invite people to imagine, interpret and respond to a place, bringing their own ideas and feelings into the creative process. Through this collaborative approach, William helps teams envision places with charm, character and a strong sense of identity.