DesignThinkingDrawing Training

I have just completed my first three day program of DesignThinkingDrawing.

There was a core group for the three days with a single day registration for day one and five more for day three. Each day had a specific focus and built on a sequence of design process. I have refined the program based on the number of courses I have run over the last six years. The workshop is formed around a series of group and individual exercises with very clear instructions, talks with examples, demonstrations, individual advice, and pinups with review.

Day one began with drawing warm-ups, then urban observation, visual thinking and drawing diagrams to reveal the qualities of places. The workshop always uses a specific design case study and I chose the proposed town centre around the newly constructed Leppington Railway Station in Western Sydney. Working in groups at 1:2000, the afternoon addressed site and context analysis and strategic concepts for the town centre. This exercise almost became a preliminary design, so towards the end participants were asked to prepare smaller A3 diagrams that encapsulated the primary ideas in the plan. The purpose of this work was to provide a strong platform for the subsequent designing. A pinup and review of the work concluded the day.

The second day was the big design day, but commenced with an exercise drawing the same image three times in fifteen minutes, three minutes and then from memory. (it is great) Urban tissues were then used to quickly generate options and ideas. Master plans were prepared at 1:2000 showing street and block structure, locations of key land-uses, public buildings, plazas and open spaces. We then jumped up a scale to 1:1000 to prepare a detailed illustrative master plan with building footprints and more design detail of the public realm. Before the final pinup, the groups had to determine the key cross-section locations and the preferred viewing point/s for a perspective on the following day. This enabled me to create a 3D model of the view to assist with the perspective drawing on day 3. We concluded the day with another pinup and review.

The third day focused on the detailed built form and character of buildings and spaces of the master plan. The first exercise was an analysis of images of urban buildings, and drawing a diagram in elevation and section to describe their qualities and character. A series of cross-sections through the key streets and spaces of the design were drawn. These ideas were then used to create a visualisation for the town centre drawn in perspective over sketch-up massing models. I did a demonstration of this exercise.

DesignThinkingDrawing is relatively intense, but participants were not overwhelmed with the concentration of design activity in a short time. In the words of one participant.

“...a fantastic course that guides people from different disciplines on the urban design journey and distils the design process into key elements. Would do it again in a heartbeat.”