Architectural drawings may be disconnected from the construction process, but urban design drawings are too often disconnected from reality.
In February, Eleanor Jolliffe wrote an interesting column about architectural drawings. She memorably recounted how Brunelleschi once got up in bed and proved that, drawings or not, his cupola in Florence could not be built without his presence on site. However, once design and construction were separated, drawings became something that was done by architects, one step removed from the building process.
This work reminded me of a long-abandoned project in which I and fellow high street artist Lucy Montagu continued to examine the same process in urban design.
For us, two of the key figures were active 300 years after Brunelleschi, and their specialty was landscape, not architecture. Lancelot Brown and Humphrey Repton, known to their fans as Capabilities, invented a remote working method that urban designers still employ today.
Before them, landscape design was primarily done by landowners and their head gardeners, who shaped the land for decades. By contrast, Brown’s method of working was to come to a house for a few days as a houseguest and survey the landscape. He then commissioned a topographical survey using a newly invented kit that allowed him to do it much more accurately than before.
Once the survey maps were completed, he and his assistants were able to prepare designs on paper in the comfort of his office. In this way, Capability Brown designed his 160 parks and gardens over his 20-plus year career.
Repton’s contribution was his “Red Book,” so called because it contained descriptions of his drawings and plans in red binding. His particular innovations were his “before and after” watercolor paintings of facing leaves, which could be folded over the current view to show the scene after the work was completed.
Unlike Brown, who offered contract services to realize his landscapes, Repton’s commission ended with the delivery of the red book. Even if his designs were built (and many were not), it was without his involvement. In this way, as in modern urban design, the drawing becomes the goal.
Lucy and I have identified seven ways urban designers use drawings. The first is to understand the location through analytical diagrams. These range from floor plans of x-ray-like shapes to the pseudoscience of blueprints full of arrows and circles that purport to describe an area.
We trick ourselves into thinking that if we can decorate the landscape of the place we’re designing with pictures of happy people, that place will make people happy.
Next, there is drawing as thinking. Sit around a table with felt-tip pens or pencils and discuss your designs. I’m not sure how many urban designers still do this in a world where we seem to be designing with his BIM, but BIM has always been an important part of my design process .
Next, there is the role of drawings for communication. Sketches and diagrams to illustrate ideas as you develop your scheme. I sometimes draw pictures as part of my teaching. Regulatory and parametric plans to control development. Fifth, sell the scheme to the developer or create drawings as a sales pitch on behalf of the developer.
However, it is the last two roles of drawing in urban design that are at issue. In our view, the sixth role is to “deceive and deceive.” Painting a scene that will never happen. I am reminded of Gordon Cullen’s illustrations of squares full of happy people that were deserted and windswept when they were built. And of course, every one of his CGIs is full of crowds of multicultural people, at least one of his with a stroller, maybe a child with a balloon, and maybe an outdoor movie theater?
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Deception may be too strong a word, since the seventh role of drawing in urban design is “self-delusion.” Because we believe this! We trick ourselves into thinking that if we can embellish the landscape of the place we’re designing with pictures of happy people, that place will make people happy.
In the lepton rendering this was not very important. He often painted lords and ladies standing happily in new landscapes, but the red book became an end in itself, and even though it depicted a fantasy that could never happen, was happy and didn’t hurt anyone.
The same cannot be said about the Old Town Hall masterplan or the large-scale redevelopment site in the town centre. Creating drawings that deceive ourselves and others about how successful these places will be is too often a substitute for the hard work of understanding what actually makes a good place.
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