YELLOWKNIFE SKYLINE

JMB: There is a unique quality to the air in Yellowknife. Especially when the air on the edge of dawn, and a heartbeat to noon, as in this drawing in January, freezes with glee below the mercury.

The town sits in a dish on the edge of the lake with a slow barren hill as a sentinel. A skirt of jack pine and sparse aspen punctuate the horizon.

Some sense the city's harsh modernity in the landscape, like towers that spur through the rock.

Still, it is an object of beauty.

From Jackfish Lake, the city's skyline peeks above the crest of the lakeshore for a softened view of the modern architecture. It harmonizes in this instance as a backdrop to the bedrock and waterline. It is important to realize how modern images of the city can in fact play off the wilderness all around.

The glow of Auroras over the winter northern landscape brands the experience of life in Yellowknife.

Many travel from far and wide for this spectacle that is a gift to the residents. This most complete view from the end of the Strip, is only equaled in the summer when the waters of Frame Lake mirror the city's skyline.

This other view of the city's skyline is enjoyed from the downtown residential core. It outlines the major destinations to downtown - office buildings and shopping centers - as well as the pedestrian jaunt over bedrock that can get you there.

From Old Town, the view of the skyline is restricted to a narrow field of view. And the topography again limits this view of the skyline which can only be seen from the Old Float Plane base, where it sets against the marina and the bay in the foreground, with the east end of downtown and adjacent residential neighborhoods tumbling down to the water's edge.

In this skyline view the Northwestel Tower, Scotia Center and Bellanca Building are still visible behind the YK center and flanked with the Coast Fraser Tower.

In the view from Old Town the variable late winter sky accentuates underexposure of the skyline, which only ever gets lit by the early summer sun from the east. This skyline extends to the north with the Niven Lake residential subdivisions and the crest of the bedrock as it carries off the shores of Great Slave Lake.

The Yellowknife skyline is made up of four principal high rises that can be seen from all viewpoints: the Bellanca Building, blue with a Canada sign; the twin Scotia Centre and Precambrian Building, white with vertical striped glazing and dark violet caps; and the Northwestel Tower, teal green with vertical striped windows and distinctive green Northwestel logo. They are the focal points that define Yellowknife's urban silhouette.

This hidden part of town is School Draw. The view from School Draw is to Great Slaves Lake. It is the end of the skyline.

Five more multi-storeyed structures come in and out of view to complete the skyline from four distinct viewpoints in the City.

Two viewpoints are located by the Strip, a third one directly south of downtown, and the fourth from Old Town.

As you move from these viewpoints, the skyline immediately disappears from view, to be replaced by the immediate architecture that makes the various urban textures. This is an important feature of Yellowknife and the abrupt transition from these vistas with open space in the foreground to the urban fabric of each urban district can be emphasized, all the more since it is well supported by an equivalent transition in the road network, from boulevard to street.

Yellowknife's skyline is one of its urban design strengths. As we can see in plan, the foreground to all viewpoints are lakeshore and open space bedrock which are not likely to be either modified or built up. Similarly, revitalization and urban growth downtown can only positively contribute to the existing stock of high rises that define the skyline, and ultimately the city, with dramatic contrast against the natural setting.

The only element that will either detract or compliment this experience of the urban place is the texture of each district where these four strategic view points are located, and the progression in urban form from one view point to the next.

This is significant since it suggests that one strategy for improving and sustaining urban form in Yellowknife is to target the textural quality immediately adjacent to these viewpoints, with the quality of focal or nodal elements at or near these viewpoints, and how edges and networks connect these nodes and focal points. This in turn limits urban design interventions to these targets, with less attention needed for other areas.

These last views of the skyline are quite unique to Yellowknife but belong to the ice road, from Dettah and the houseboat marina. They show the Con mine towers lights and the Tin Can Hill Communication towner. At the other end, North of Downtown, street lights on 50th avenue link Franklin and Old Town.

OLD TOWN: QUIXOTIC TIMELESS ISLAND

JMB: Old Town is individualistic, close-knit, unapologetic. That is where fish is sold, where house-boats sit on ice, and where pedestrians, cars and cross-country skiers alike borrow the frozen lake, until the bustle of long summer days.

Old Town is more than quaint: it is a legacy, a lifestyle, history and a tradition.

Boats in their frozen slumber still hibernate.

Meanwhile, the marina thawes ever so slowly.

Old Town docks to downtown. A floatplane and a boat come handy with the second car, a the attached garage. You can't simply buy into it: you must learn and grow with it, and as you free yourself from urbanized ties and civilization, the city becomes one more playground, a home close to home.

Unique architecture, lakes, bedrock and boreal vegetation are hallmarks of this winter city. Old Town takes the lead and examplifies it the most. It is difficult to single out any one building for its exentricity. This set of houses, stacked as it seems, clinging to the rock, will serve as some of the best examples.

The intricate gambrel of the upper roof delineates the simple line of the lower building. Modern lines, impeccable architecture, whimsy and orchestrated geometry play with the vertical expanse of the bedrock. A roof-top greenhouse confirms by the certainty of its design that nothing is left to chance, and that artistry is meant as a vehicle of congruity.

Old Town takes your breath away gradually. One-way traffic divides to the right, loops back to the left and climbs up the middle. The balance between the rocky promontory and this crafted residence provides bold yet delicate entrance images. The urban design is so significant that title to this house is nothing short of art ownership.

On the other side by the bridge, the transition from peninsula to islet at the old float plane base is the site of a remarkably unusual apartment building. Ship-like and like a wharf anchored to bedrock, it even sports upper living quarters in what at first looks like exagerated roof-top-units. It is not to everyone's taste. Nonetheless it is undoubtedly unique and in keeping with the rest of Old Town's one-of-kind architecture.

DOWNTOWN: MAIN AXIS

JMB: Franklin Avenue, also known as 50th Avenue is the main axis in Yellowknife, from the entrance into downtown to where downtown ends by the lake as it turns into Old Town.

The first design elements at the entrance of town are symptomatic of the urban experience in Yellowknife. The diffuse urban context suddenly tightens. Residential images tumble to a stop at a church and a school around a bend in the boulevard.

Modern buildings and office towers are thrown at you, and the only reprieve comes from traffic lights and pedestrian crossings that give you a chance to absorb it all as they slow you down.

Mildred Hall Elementary School is a very modern building with unique - almost unusual architectural quality. It is fronted with a turn of last century log cabin.

The contrast in texture between the two is blended with bedrock that juts out of somewhat grassy, somewhat muddy ground. It is all enclosed with a jumble of chainlink fencing, distinctive light fixture and overhead power lines hanging off thick timber posts. There is a unique sense of pride, ambition and incompletion.

A finer and more detailed analysis reveals that Yellowknife's unique and bold choice of character and avant-garde architecture is undermined by the usual ills of the North American city: namely the grid, the back-alley and a lack of compact urban form, as the latter grew into a city from the former.

Outstanding architecture gets somewhat lost in the middle of holes in the urban fabric. And even with the utmost care and tidiness, the back-alley stays utilitarian before it becomes functional, and continuously competes against efforts to bring upscale quality to the front street.

In our modern towns the street - and ultimately the urban space - is not a social space. It is instead limited to being a functional thoroughfare for pedestrian and vehicles. Social activities are kept indoors - except for few annual events that hardly convert urban places to a cultural environment. And conversely, social spaces such as malls do not substitute for urban spaces.

The situation is compounded in Canadian cities, and all the more in Yellowknife, because of the weather. Yet, adequate urban design can make the urban space a center for social life, even in a winter city. Winter conditions actually foster the need for urban form at the pedestrian and human scale. But it is evident that our urban environments are not designed for the weather.

The grid is a winning formula for urban form at the small town scale - neat, tidy, orderly and business-like in a tendered hinterland. The challenge of the grid in the town that turns into a city, is that an investment in a town's architectural stock gets lost in the grid.
It requires for the whole grid to be re-developed for it to be revitalized. And as streets lengthen into avenues, the perspective becomes a set of lengthy corridors where buildings come in and out of focus as quickly as you go by them without hierarchy or anticipation.

In contrast, concentric cities from the nineteenth century in Europe require very little investment in their nodes for revitalization to be focused, immediate and successful. And these focal points continuously stand in the distance, no matter how far, and the more distant the more grand. Meanwhile, servicing is kept out of sight in the inner core of each city block.

Similarly, medieval walled cities in Asia, Europe or the Middle East provide a tight core which is a focus to the expanding metropolis they've become.

While the grid as a legacy from the Railway culture provides a unique and distinctive form at a smaller scale, it quickly exhausts itself in the modern metropolis. And because the grid is rectilinear, creating nodes will be more successful in providing punctuation and destinations than focal points.

To make matters worse, the geometry of the grid combine with the stack effect from tall building to effectively turn the street into a wind tunnel. The weather engulfs and augments from one end to the next, whirls at every crossing, while gusts slap down from above.

Similarly, the grid in Yellowknife makes it almost impossible to truly enjoy the remarkable architecture along Franklin Avenue. Instead, as it often happens in North American cities, the street becomes a long corridor, where run-down structures and utilitarian components such as communication towers compete with distinctive buildings.

That is truly unfortunate, since some significant buildings with bold and yet sensitive architecture punctuate the rythm and provide vital urban spaces. The Greenstone building depicted
here is the newest and most successful example.

Across the street however, blank run-down facades bereft of windows, with quasi boarded doors, shelter social tragedy as it finds harbour there since no-one else claims this key strech of the street. As such it pretty much sterilizes this unique urban space on the other side.

Nothing in this revitalized urban space provides relief from mother nature, so that this quite remarkable little urban square goes unused and stays empty. Additional design would capitalize on the positive social opportunities at the street level between the truly beautiful marriage between the Greenstone Building and the Northwestel Tower.

At the time of this writing though, a demolition permit is posted on the door of the derelict building (the Gallery), and the property is expected to be redeveloped with an office building. This will have a major impact on Franklin Avenue and downtown Yellowknife as a whole. The new building will combine with the new Greenstone building and the Northwestel tower across the street to create an major urban place in Yellowknife.

The linearity of Franklin Avenue notwithstanding, the sinuous weaving of 49th Avenue along Frame Lake's waterfront, to Capital Area and to one of Yellowknife's downtown gateway is another great opportunity for urban design in downtown Yellowknife.

By accentuating the street linkage between 49th and 50th avenues, a dynamic tension can be created to balance the entrance at Mildred School, the exit towards Old Town and the Gateway at Capital Area and the Explorer Hotel.

This dynamic tension can be used to orchestrate the reduction of blight, to guide meaning and accent with redevelopment and additions, and to complement existing social patterns downtown: school and family; business and office life; movie theater and coffee shop; lunch and drinks; malls and shopping; hotels, night-life and tourism.

As purposeful design melds function with tradition, meaningful urban form nurtures the rise of local culture from social events.

In this next view of Franklin Avenue, we see the remainder of the Avenue as it terminates at the other end of downtown from metropolitan to heritage cultural and the waterfront. The tight - albeit at times ragged - urban fabric of the downtown core dissolves just as suddenly as it had come together. It is an abrupt transition in land uses through urban edge and rural fringe without a design element taking a strong role either as a focal point or as a node.

From downtown though, the view is preserved as is the draw to Old Town. Pocket size metropolis with all three levels of government, headquarters for the Territory and gateway to the Arctic - Downtown may still ponder this connection to Old Town from umbilical chord to parade route.

PROCESS

Sketching
Sketching is the corner stone of this approach to urban design.

Sketching requires a trip through urban space, and time spent absorbing each scene in its urban context. Sketching is especially good to do in teams when the target is street life and the human element, so you shield each other and do not appear so conspicuous looking at and drawing people.

Sketching in teams is essential to compare each other's sensitivities, creativity and thought processes. And nothing is as exhilirating as swapping clipboards and sketchbooks, comparing sketches, and disserting urban design and sketching techniques, comfortably tucked in a local coffee shop at the end of a sketching session.

Sketching is also good to do from your car. It is comfortable, sheltered, and well suited for such media as watercolor - or when using larger format media. Experiment sketching side by side, and see how even as little as elbow length affects frame and perspectives. This is truly telling to understanding urban experience through sketching.

Train yourself to do fast fineliner or graphite sketches, standing in a street, with your back safely to a lampost or a street sign.

Finally, try and enlist people who do not necessarily sketch but who write, videotape, take pictures or record soundscapes. These alternative techniques can follow the very same techniques and theories we apply to sketching.

Posts
Posting sketches from each sketching trip is another feature of this approach to urban design. Each post is the output and end result of a sketching trip. Sketches are supplemented by maps - in keeping with urban design traditions, and where applicable photos, videos and sound recordings.

Title
A title is essential. The title expresses the focus of the sketches in their urban context.

Caption
Captions are optional, yet fundamental to urban design. Captions describe the urban design strategies that are evident in the sketch, and the reason for selecting the scene to sketch. Refer to Gordon Cullen's townscape for a list of urban design strategies applicable to each thumbnail sketch.

Blog Writeup
The write up is one other feature of these posts. The write up is a combination essay and commentary on what was sketched. Typically we have had (see http://sketchcalgary.blogspot.com/) each sketching team member use their initials and leave a written commentary to what they sketch. The write-up is a combination literary piece, urban design theory, critique, and technique add-ons to the sketches.

Comments
Comments are responses to the posts from readers of our blogs. These comments are not only welcome, they are the real reason for us to post. Through these comments we can originate further discussion on urban design, techniques and the experience of urban space in the local urban context.

Participants
Participants are anyone of course who wishes to join in the outing or submit comments. These will ideally be a combination of urban designers, artists, community representatives and municipal staff who see value and share an interest in urban design. (See Post on Participants)

Participants are also whomsoever provides comments through this blog in response to the posts. These comments are invaluable to the urban design process we espouse here. It is ultimately the very aim of maintaining an urban design blog - and the only real way to make the urban experience we speak of so much tangible.

Description, Prescription, Critique
The over-riding aim of this urban design approach is to describe what takes place in the urban space. Prescription - a commentary of what should take place - is much less important, and de-emphasized in this approach. Our hope and intent is to elicit awareness and inspire interveners in our urban forms. There is no desire to dictate how the town should evolve, nor where public or private monies should be spent.

Urban design strategies we reveal suggest an underlying identity to the town. The critique is intended to highlight what works against what doesn't work in terms of urban form and function as revealed through sketching - not opinions. The critique is also intended to transcribe and interpret the urban experiences evidenced through these posts in terms of urban design principles.

TECHNIQUES

Sketching
Sketching is the visual presentation of a concept or an idea. Distinguish it from drawing, painting or rendering. Sketching is immediate, un-contrived, and fast. Sketching expresses seeing and the thought process. Drawing, painting and rendering express media, composition and visual arts. When you sketch, most of your attention is on the scene in front of you. When you draw, paint or render, most or all of your attention is on the paper and media in front of you.

Sketching for urban design aims to express and articulate the experience of urban space. You will eventually want to sketch from different vantage points, and with a larger number of sketches to open yourself to the experience and to record the urban space. It needs to be quick and simple or it will exhaust you. Sketches should not take you more than between 3mn to 30mn.

The very same techniques apply to writings: apply the very same fundamental techniques of sketching, and instead of lines and shapes on the paper, you will use words and sentences. The same applies again, if you use a camera, a video-camera or soundrecording.

Frame
The frame is the key element of sketching, and the source of most initial stumbling blocks. The frame represents the field of vision. Think of the frame as a camera viewfinder. Hold your sketching pad at arms length and relax your eye. What you sketch should be what's behind the sketchpad.

If what you want to sketch is bigger and spills out on the sides of your sketchpad held at arms' length, either reposition yourself by moving backwards, or draw what fits within your sketchpad frame only. If it seems smaller, draw what you see. Then, if you want to draw more detail, move in closer and start a new sketch - this will also be your first step towards Serial Vision.

We usually see a lot more than what we can sketch - because the eye continuously refocuses. The fundamental point of sketching is to relax both your mind and your eye, and let your hand follow your eye within the frame.

As you develop this most fundamental technique, you will forget you sketch and think urban design - going through the frame and composition in terms of urban design theories.

When you try to sketch outside the frame - meaning, what you sketch does not fit in the frame as you hold it at arms' length, you are no longer sketching, you are drawing. This means that in order to draw, you must introduce an intellectual step to transcribe what you see into what you draw.

Sketch by looking mostly at your scene, and a lot less at what you sketch. You need to trust your hand and worry not about making a picture. Once you are relaxed with your frame, look at what you see. As much as possible, keep sketchpad and scene in line - learn to hold your pad at or just below eye height. Even holding your sketchpad on your lap may be too far, and forces you to move your eyes too much.

Learn to sketch standing up. Learn to sketch with gloves on. Your material must be simple and immediate - hence the clipboard and a pen or graphite.

Once you have quickly blocked the scene in a few minutes, you can relax your arms to your waist or your knees and add in a few details. And that should be enough. Anything beyond that will be rendering - which is fine. Simply understand at that point that your sketch is done, and you are now enjoying drawing or painting into your sketch. That can be the opportunity as well, to block in some colors, for future reference until you are ready to draw from the sketch in the studio.

Spend time allowing your eye to explore the elements. Now you are ready to guide your sketch through composition. At that moment you are ready to simply fill in the blanks so to speak and sketch the elements as quickly and simply as you look at them where they appear in the frame. The key is to give the eye more time and to simplify the hand.

Media
The foundation of sketching is the clipboard. The clipboard is simple and flat and it can hold a variety of paper types. The clipboard gives you a standard letter, 8.5x11 format, which works in all scanners. The clipboard is easily carried along, and can be kept in your vehicle or your satchel. It is versatile, and does not need to be exclusive to sketching.

Notebook-type clipboards are ideal, because the clip is thin with a low profile, they fold - thus protecting your drawing - and oftentime have a vinyl covering which allows you to lay wet watercolour paper on the back. An elastic is convenient to hold the loose end of the paper so it doesn't flap in the wind.

A sketchpad or block does the same. A sketchbook is a somewhat different proposition: a sketchbook suggests you will keep an on-going record of sketches in the same place, which is fine but more advanced and demanding. Indeed, to commit to filling the 30 to 70 pages of your sketchbook can be daunting, especially in the beginning when you will be overly critical of the finished product, failing to see what you sketched for what you wanted to draw. Also, a sketchbook is better suited for a topic you will follow like a running diary. A sketchbook works well also to record personal drawings and ideas, which of course falls outside of what we do here, since we sketch what we see instead of what we think.

An assortment of paper types works best for urban design sketching: 20lb bond paper with a fineliner; 90lb rough toothed paper or sketchbook with 9B graphite pencil or colour pencils; or 140lb cold-pressed paper with watercolour. Trace paper is nice to carry along, to work out an idea, or composition on a sketch you like and want to experiment with.

Bond and fineliner are the most immediate media. They reproduce perfectly, will scan at the lowest resolution for internet upload, and can be blown up to any format with no loss of detail. Bond and fineliner is where you should start. You should aim for speed - 10mn at the most. You draw lines and outlines, and add values and textures with hatchings and dotting. Line sketches impress people the most, because of the level of abstraction and a sense of the familiar. Your viewer understands the media - it is the same they use daily for writing themselves. As a result this is the media which conveys your thought process the best. Any other media creates an artistic barrier, where the viewer responds to the media as much as to the subject.

9B Graphite pencils and rough paper are the most intuitive media. They are also the fastest. You can literally complete a scene in under 3mn. Carry a pencil sharpener and keep the graphite sharp. Learn also to draw with the angled side of the sharpened tip, so you keep it sharp as you draw. Learn to hold it in your palm instead of between fingers. The aim is to draw light, shadows and shapes. Think of it more as you would a brush than a pencil. Use your finger or a blotting pad to smudge the graphite. And of course no erasing. Erasers only play a part as a rendering medium. Your 9B Graphite also reveals the grain of the paper, and it is an important part for the viewer. There is sensual delight in it.

Colour pencils and rough paper are the most simple media. Carry anywhere from 4 to 12, plus a white. The more you have the less you sketch. The point of having 12 is to add to the four to create better value. For each of the base 4 (usually red, blue, yellow, green) you add a hue on either side of the colour wheel to suggest light and shade, and that makes twelve. White is essential to colour pencils - because it allows you to blend. Without white, simply use 4 colours for even faster sketches. Unlike watercolor, color pencil do not work well with graphite. Lay your first blocking and composition with the blue pencil. Use the blue pencil also for shadows, and anywhere you have the urge to reach for graphite. Add red to block where subjects are closer or to suggest perspective, and use yellow sparingly to suggest highlights. Green produces grey for the red, and warmth for the blue, in addition to where you need foliage and grass. Green works well for the transition from middle to back.

Watercolors are the most expressive media. Wet on wet expresses mood. Wet on dry expresses form and accentuates the texture of the paper. Dry brush - true dry brush that is - belongs in the studio. Watercolor is important because it allows you to sketch the reverse of line drawing. You sketch light and shapes. Brushes give you a soft feel as if you touched what you see. A mop, a flat and a round are the brushes you need - in the smaller sizes. If you carry only one brush, the mop will accentuate mood, the round will accentuate form. Watercolor requires not only good technique with the media, but also to refine the art for sketching so you're not fumbling with your paint, paper and brush. A wet paper will time your sketching with the time it takes to dry - usually 15mn to 20mn. You should aim for minimalist palettes, and your choice of palette is just as important as the composition itself.

F pencil along with a 9b graphite works great with watercolors on a watercolor sketchbook for precise recording of a scene. It is fast, impeccable and still quite loose. The F pencil quickly blocks in the scene, the 9b graphite adds values and the watercolors are used with washes where a little more time is spent first to build a minimalist palette. This works great once you are confident with your sketching and you have a topic you are working on for which you have assigned a sketchbook. Depending on the situation your sketchbook can be quite small - no bigger than a notebook, and along with a pocket brush and three or four paint tubes, or a tiny pocket set, you can take it anywhere.

Linework
Before you build a scene, sketch elements and subjects. Points, straight lines, geometric shapes and free form constitute the syntax of sketching.

Interpret all you see as simple shapes, straight lines, arcs and points.

Points: First feel your media with points - dots if you will. As you look at your scene, touch your paper with your fineliner, pencil or brush where your eye looks at the scene. Then lift it to touch again where you look again, and do this in relationship to your composition. This will rest your eye and hand, and along with the composition, will give you a starting point which is almost the end point of your sketch. You can take this technique further, and literally sketch by connecting the dots. Crosses or intersecting ticks, make great points from which to start straight lines, and to express where light and shade meet. Conversely, and especially with brushes, a dot can become a blob where shadows cast.

Lines: A line is what connects two points. We only draw straight lines and arcs. You make a straight line by going back and forth between two points. Barely touching the paper between the two points, fairly decisively after this, slowly as you relax. You do not stop in between the two points, and you do not lift your pen or pencil. Add more points in between if it feels odd. Avoid the "feathering" way of drawing a line where the pencil draws a lot of little strokes. A line is continuous, uninterrupted motion. The thick part of the straight line is at the points, and wherever that line is in fact the dark value of a shadow in the scene you look at. The thick part of an arc is in the middle, and it tapers to its originating points. The thick part of the arc is either inside or outside of the curve and it depends on where shadows cast from the curve.

Shapes: a rectangle is not a roundish shape drawn with one continuous line. It is four distinct lines that cross over where they connect four points. A circle is not a blob - it is the connection of separate arcs - and in sketching, will be affected by light, so half of your circle will be the outer and the other half will be the inner side of the shape.

With watercolour, practice making good and quick washes. You do this by loading your brush once with water, squeezing that water from the belly of the brush against the side of the pan into the paint and reloading the brush with the mix. Learn the different mixes and dilutions: syrupy, creamy, oily, milky, watery. More watery dilutions belong to painting. The five dilutions will give you five different brush strokes and feel, and with these you will sketch in shapes - from flat atmospheric washes to forms. With brushes, think less of sketching lines than shapes.

Freeforms: In sketching, freeform is where you add detail. Freeform must be done exclusively by not looking at your paper. Once your frame, composition and blocking are established, your eye and hand should be so coordinated and your eye so relaxed that what you follow with your eye your hand should follow.

In the context of the sketching format you will be following freeforms over a square inch or two at the very most. Pen or brush pressure is essential to freeform - you literally touch the paper in the manner your eye looks at the scene.

The other aspect of freeform in the context of sketching is texture: hatching or dotting. For these, which you would typically add last, you actually look at your paper - and at that point you are on the verge of rendering, but then you now have a completed picture that mirrors the scene in front of you. A word of caution: resist using this step to correct or add to your sketch; this step is simply to express form, light and texture; this step should not take you more than a few seconds; this step should be used sparingly only where you add detail. Anything beyond that will best be enjoyed in the studio.

Composition
The point of composition for sketching is to use guiding principles for your eye and hand. You can almost reduce the technique of sketching to that of the frame and composition. Since we are not attempting to draw or render, you will simply place what you see in the frame with a few lines, points - or shapes if you use a brush.

Rule of threes: Divide your frame into three vertical and three horizontal areas. Quickly decide which of the 9 subframes your subject will fit in. Then, from the horizon line, divide your frame with the three grounds and the three skies.

Horizon: Second, identify the horizon line. This is where the sky meets the ground.

Eye Level: Then you let your eye rest, and where you look is your eye level. Identify where it is in relation to the horizon. This will determine perspective. Perspective by size means something farther will be smaller. Perspective by vanishing point means that what is farther will be closer to your eye level line than something nearer. Simple, yet fundamental, and all you need to know about perspective for sketching - the rest is about drawing perspective. The reason is that all you need is to look at your scene and draw it. "Farther-smaller, farther-closer" is enough for a quick sketch.

Ground: Identify foreground, middleground, and background. Determine where your focus is, although and especially for the purpose of sketching it will be the middle ground. Your focus is where you will add in details.

Sky: identify foresky, middlesky and backsky. This will strongly support the perspective. Either your sky is full of the same clouds, or is filled with different clouds. In the former, you will have one or two of these clouds in your foresky, a few more in the middle sky and a lot more in the backsky. In the latter, identify where in the foresky, middlesky or backsky the different clouds meet.

Value: identify first what is dark, what is bright and what is grey. In the dark and the bright there is no detail. Then, in the grey, identify dark grey, middle grey and light grey. For the purpose of sketching, middle grey is where your details will be. Quickly assign these 5 values within your 9 subframes. 5 values works best for sketching, instead of the 7 values for drawing and rendering where you further divide dark and light greys. The combination of the 5 values, the 9 subframes, the blocking of subjects and where to add detail is your sketch.

The greatest hurdle to sketching is being unclear about what you sketch and attempting to draw what you should be sketching. As you sketch, continously go back to the basics: frame, composition, value. Remind yourself to look at the scene in front of you as it is bounded by the frame, and look into that scene for middleground, foreground and background. Then sketch your main subject into one of the subframes.

Palette
Building a palette is reserved of course for watercolor, and to a very limited extent to colour pencil.

When you build a palette for sketching with watercolor, you in fact sketch on your palette by combining minimal paints. The aim is to match the unique light and hues of the scene in front of you. Resist the urge to think of the palette as colors - think of it as light. Try to start with as few paints as possible: two, three or four - sepia and indigo are perfect for two primaries, and either ideal for monochrome watercolor sketches. Next add paints you would consistently mix with your primary paints. Next add earth pigments. Finally add pigments on the warm side.

On your palette, you mix the light in front of you, in the absence of forms, yet you somehow retain frame and composition. You also use the palette to feel the mix and dilutions, and brush loading. A mixing brush separate from your painting brush is a really good idea. You then load the paint brush to fill the colors in the composition. Pocket sets come with a little break-apart pocket brush which is perfect for this.

Once your palette is ready, it should mirror the scene in an abstract manner without shapes - just as precisely as linework mirrors the same scene without color (light).

A palette for color pencils is somewhat different. You build that palette by selecting as few pencils as possible, and working out swatches with and without white pencil blending until you have the lights you like. Then you add color pencils for the hues you need on either side of a pencil for lights and dark, and it needs not be for all of them. A palette is not essential for color pencils: you work them out of the box to create perspective and emphasize form in addition to adding color references for your sketch.

Subject
Your subject matter in urban design will consist of a number of other elements or subjects. These will fall in to either architecture, landscapes or figures.

These subjects will be the elements you observe in the scene you have selected. In addition to frame and composition, spend the time to understand them well, because they are what this is all about. It is easy to forget subject and give yourself in to artistic delight. Even when this happens though, you will be left with worthwhile sketches. Keeping subject in mind, however, will transmute sketching into urban design.

Learn to draw symbols - which means shorthand thumbsketches for trees, cars, buildings and people. A thumbnail sketch for these should come to you as quickly as writing a word. Simple shorthand symbols combined in composition produce the most artifice where the viewer will see the scene instead of the method. It will free you as well to see and for speed. Symbols work best with fineliner linework.

Learn to draw people. At a distance they are figures. A dot for the head, and an oblong shape for the body. Draw two people or groups of people as one shape. Only draw facial features if the face occupies one entire subframe. You then draw dots for eyes, slight slants for nostrils and straight little lines for mouths. Anything in between you draw arms and legs, scalps and dot in eyes. And people's eyes are at the same level, unless they are taller or shorter, or coming up or down at you. It is the size of their bodies that change with distance. For drawing more people, spend time figure and portrait drawings.

Learn to sketch architecture. The almost totality of architecture is rectangles and triangles. You do not draw all the windows, and all the doors. You only draw a few of these where they are in the grey, out of light and dark. If you are specifically sketching architecture, focus on elevations. For architectural perspectives, spend time drawing perspectives one building at a time. When you come back to sketching it, leave most of that knowledge behind, and go back to drawing simple geometry, and shadow lines where roofs meet walls, and under the window sills and under door jambs. Keep a dark line where the building meets the ground.

Learn landscapes. Perspectives to the horizon are a combination of hierarchy and size. Skies and clouds need to be done quickly. Trees, branches and rocks are done with straight line - they do not curve. Trees are balanced. The underside of rocks is dark. And in perspective rocks start as dots in the background, become little circles in the middleground and you only draw one rock or two with geometric shapes in the foreground. Pathways are perspectives, as are surfaces with increasing rythm the farther you draw. Learn to draw water simply. Little waves only appear in the shade, and reflections only need to be suggested.

Keep a sketchbook of recurring forms: trees, skies, clouds, cars. Use a variety of media to sketch them, and aim to sketch them quickly and from different perspectives. The result is that you will draw them the way you write letters, without thinking of the letter but of the words they make and the meaning these words have in a sentence, in what the sentence expresses in your essay.

THEORIES

Manifest
· Definition of Urban Design
Urban design aims to coordinate environment and experience towards an urban context.

· Urban Design within the Urban Context
Urban Design identifies the use of Urban space for artistic expression. Urban Design also recognizes urban space as art in itself.

· Urban Design and Art
Urban Design combines art with design. Whereas Art aims for an emotional response and Design aims for an intellectual response, both make use of media, composition and subject – and both incorporate each other as a strategy between emotions and intellect.

· Urban Design as the coordination of form and function
Urban Design acknowledges the urban context is a dynamic vehicle for the urban space. Static evidence of urban environments needs orchestrating between built form and end users.

· Urban Design and public participation
Public participation is fundamental to urban design. Understanding the nature, the meaning and the use of urban space between the private and the public is essential to bridge culture, art and society in an urban context.

· Urban Design and municipal administration
Municipal order and vision necessitate urban design to mitigate decision making through urban form.

· Urban design from description to prescription
Urban design is eminently significant when it describes urban context. Evidence and expression of the urban context defines the unique identity of each urban space. Prescription for urban design is at best controversial and at worst limiting. The purpose of urban design is to lead from analysis to implementation.

· Urban Design as the staging of experience
The ultimate end of Urban Design consists in articulating social experience amidst the built environment. Urban Design is predicated upon a deterministic continuum within which urbanism unfolds . The success of Urban Design is gauged as a staging ground for individual and cultural experiences within urban form.

· Urban Design as a professional practice
Urban Design, as a professional practice, intermingles architecture, engineering, urban planning, economics, history, sociology, psychology, geography, and information systems so each finds a common purpose in the implementation of urban form.

· Urban Design forum
Sketching is a sure approach to urban design. We have established a process between urban design methodologies, theorists and public participation. We enlist community representatives, artists and urban professionals in a standing forum with an internet blog specific to their urban community to describe their urban context.

Theorists

Urban design uses a variety of methods and theories.

Visual media as both three and two dimensional mapping uses architectural plans, elevations and perspectives. It is favoured by theorists such as Gordon Cullen and Kevin Lynch.

Gordon Cullen proposes a method based on serial vision, place (here and there), content (this and that) and functional tradition.

Kevin Lynch on the other hand aims for a “short hand” of design methods through mental maps, and the identification of focal points, nodes, paths, edges and districts.

Urban design also borrows mapping from Land use planning and eco-environmentalism and these are favoured by Ian McHarg and Pierre Dansereau.

Urban design also employs written descriptions and analyses, Jane Jacobs being such a theorist whose writings have become pivotal to urbanism and urban theories.

Modern approaches to urban design make use of technology to focus on such elements as soundscapes and motion.

Finally Urban Design is made complete with a compendium of examples from cities of the world, and an understanding of urban context throughout the ages – to identify the significance of place and culture to the built urban form.

METHODS

The underlying method is using this blog and posts as a vehicle of urban design.

The approach to creating these posts follows urban design fundamentals: mental maps, serial vision, urban process, nomenclatures, street scenes.

Mental Maps
Mental maps refer to the spatial sense of urban context we form as a support to urban experience through memory. Kevin Lynch reduced mental maps as a concatenation of focal points, nodes, paths, edges, districts. They are ideally created by walking about urban space and recording these five elements in plan view, and can be expanded to create obliques, elevations or panoramics. A good substitute is to analyze urban space at the onset of a sketching trip from a thumbnail map sketched from a town map - or these days even better with Google Earth, and identifying these five elements before sketching them, and aiming to sketch them in their inter-relationships.

Serial Vision
Serial vision aims to sketch series of inter-connected views. This is done by moving from point to point with a series of thumbnail sketches to show distinctive elements as they appear in the distance, then come into the forefront as other elements appear in the distance which are in turn tracked down with sketches. This is supported by identifying the Here and There(Place) - which is the visual contrast in the spatial definition between what we see where we are and what we see next to it. It is further supported by identifying the This and That(Content) - which is the texture or combination of materials and elements that define where we are from where we will continue to. The ultimate aim is to reveal Functional Tradition, or the subliminal process by which we read the urban context from form to function as the underlying condition of urban experience. This is the fundamental method explained by Gordon Cullen in his work Townscape.

Nomenclatures
Nomenclatures are built up from a series of posts that show typical elements of the urban context: these can be, and need not be limited to skies, clouds, trees, vegetation, churches, hospitals, shopping areas, city hall, institutional buildings, historic buildings, residential buildings, street furniture, signs and recurring landscape features. They define the fundamental elements that make up the features and ultimately the identity in the town. They are an extension of land use and zoning from such theorists as Ian McHarg and Pierre Dansereau.

Street scenes
Street scening is the use of the maps and serial vision to further create sketches in their ultimate urban context. This involves seeking typical human activities, dress, behaviour and anything endemic to the particular urban context. Street scenes also aim to showcase the urban context at different time of the day, with different lighting conditions, and also in different weather conditions and throughout the seasons. Street scenes are an expression of underlying urban processes as suggested by urban design theorists like Jane Jacobs.

PARTICIPANTS

Designers
Artists
Writers
Community Representatives
Community members