Urban Design Sketchcrawl Mashup

Last week the Canadian Institute of Planners conference was in Ottawa where I participated as a speaker and also lead a workshop.  The workshop was a mash-up mixing urban design principles and tour using sketching as a focus activity.  I called it "Visual Notation and Analysis" and one of the objectives was to demystify drawing.

I took the group of 20 on a walking route from the Weston Hotel to the Shaw Convention Centre, to the National Arts Centre Elgin Street, Parliament Hill and the Library of Parliament stopping to do 5 minute sketches describing that sequence using the Peace Tower as a point of reference, in the manner of Goron Cullen's classic book "Townscape" below).   It went really well and we managed to meet one of the other objectives, which was to have some fun.

I departed from the sketchcrawl tradition of comparing everyone's work at the end to take any perceived pressure off the participants but can tell you, looking over shoulders while circulating and coaching during the stops, the drawings were quite good.