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 fantastic 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 the very essence 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.
