BArch Year 1 Future City Drawing Workshop 13.03.23

The first years had just started the Urban Farm project situated in Nottingham city centre.

They were split into two groups – group A and B.  Both groups undertook the warm-up exercise.  For this, they drew one continuous line in a thin pen moving clockwise around the table whilst standing up.  They then highlighted certain shapes in a thicker pen and added hatching etc.

For the main activity, they were asked to design an imagery city of the future drawing.  I showed them photos by Archigram and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City.  They didn’t need to worry too much about the scale.

Group A began by drawing the city in plan.  They began by drawing a series of grid lines – these could be in any direction as a starting point.  They moved around the table adding to other people’s plan drawings that they had started, and drawing the landscaping in between.

Group B, took the plan of the city that Group A had created and drew the city in section. They had to interpret the previous groups drawing.  They had lots of fun and became very lively, animated and chatty talking about the drawing.  They became more and more imaginative as the drawing developed and drew pigs in the sky creating compost, floating trees, flying fish etc!

Holly Mills, Senior Lecturer at NTU

The students enjoyed participating in the drawing tasks; they particularly liked imagining the plans of the city as a section. The students worked together to illustrate the city with elements such as people, trees and transportation options (including even a flying car!).

Carmel Cain, Student Researcher