Urban Botany Focus – Drawing Climate Adaptation through Plants

In the Urban Botany focus of Sketchcity Week, we explore how plants narrate the story of urban change. Through drawing, we uncover the often-overlooked role of vegetation as a living infrastructure — shaping, adapting, and softening the urban landscape.

Using the Sketch&Draw method and routines inspired by Artful Thinking (Harvard Project Zero), participants will learn to observe plants not only botanically, but within their full social, cultural, and ecological context. Each sketch becomes an investigation: – How do plants inhabit architectural structures? – What do they tell us about climate resilience and the transformation of public space? – How do living systems negotiate with the built environment?

Throughout the week, we will develop Observation Sketchbooks that capture the character, agency, and atmospheres of urban plants. We will document individual plants, trace their interactions with architecture, explore the microhabitats they create, and narrate their contribution to a more liveable city.

This focus invites you to rethink the city through the eyes of its green, silent inhabitants — and to discover drawing as a research method that connects art, botany, and urbanism.

Using the Sketch&Draw method and routines inspired by Artful Thinking (Harvard Project Zero), participants will learn to observe plants not only botanically, but within their full social, cultural, and ecological context.

Tanja

Architecture and urban space

The Sketchcity week on architecture and public space begins with observing and drawing in busy squares in Rotterdam.

Urban space is more than just the area between buildings – it is a designed place that creates atmosphere through architectural design and characterises the experience of the city. As a social and cultural living space, it is significantly influenced by its architectural design.

We will use drawing to investigate what characterises the quality of some places in Rotterdam and how we might improve them.

In doing so, we ask ourselves questions such as:

– What forms and materials have been used to design the place?

– How does this place affect me?

– Who was this place designed for?

– Which groups or species are included – and which are excluded? We also look at non-human actors such as animals and plants.

– How could the place and the buildings be designed differently and better?

We understand drawing not only as a documentary means, but also as a method of spatial perception and as a form of creative imagination: drawing offers the possibility of changing spaces, designing utopias, leaving out the undesirable and trying out new perspectives. Drawing becomes the interface between reality and possibility.

By drawing and discussing together, new perspectives on space, participation and design emerge. Urban space is not given – it is made. Drawing is also a form of deceleration – it makes it possible to perceive seemingly trivial things and establish a personal relationship with the place.

Goals: – To develop drawing skills. – To develop a critical understanding of the design and use of public spaces an architecture – including in terms of social and ecological issues. – To develop and visualise new possible uses and alternative visions for the future of public spaces. Text pending

Andreas K.

Line paths – movement patterns in Rotterdam

Whether on foot, on wheels, with wings or fins – in this Sketchcity week we follow the paths that people, animals and water take through Rotterdam. We won’t be standing directly at the densest traffic junctions and documenting obvious weak points – but will be consciously moving away from them. Our aim is to pay attention and capture the movement in the urban space. We turn the perspective around: instead of just looking at the what, we focus on the how. With a sketchbook, an open mind and a methodical toolbox, we explore:

Who moves when and where?

Which paths cross – and which don’t?

Where does it get crowded, where does everything remain empty?

Our focus is on precise observation, on the conscious perception of space, rhythm and direction. By looking closely, we can recognize how the city functions – identify problems or places that already function according to our needs. Again and again, we will expand our toolbox with methodical and creative questions. What happens when we change our perspective, look at the city from above, what happens when it rains or we are out and about at a different time of day, for example at night? Guided by the Sketch&Draw rules, we will sketch and be creative here too, exploring different techniques to visualize the ways of Rotterdam. Supported by the Artful Thinking Framework (Harvard Project Zero) and inspired by the book THE CITY AT EYELEVEL (2016), we will develop questions that will not only sharpen our own observation, but also guide the view of urban planners of the future.

What do paths tell us about needs?

What remains unconnected – and why?

How do certain paths feel, what colors, lines, structures do they carry?

What makes a city legible?Who moves when and where?

Which paths cross – and which don’t?

Where does it get crowded, where does everything remain empty?

Joelle

Social Impact – traces of everyday life in the cityscape

Rotterdam is rough, creative and ever-changing – the perfect setting for a search for clues off the beaten track. In this urban sketching course, we will not only deal with flattering lines, perspectives, light and shadow, but also with the social pulse of the city. More specifically, how do people behave in public spaces and what impact does this have on the cityscape?

How do people use, change and leave the city? What is created out of protest, out of necessity, out of a desire to create? Between street art, improvised seating, urban gardening, protest messages and footpaths, we discover that the city is never finished. It is about everyday gestures and deliberate signs, pragmatic solutions, civil disobedience or simply the desire for more participation. And often it is the small, private interventions that tell us so much about needs, shortcomings and possibilities.

Together, we walk through Rotterdam with our sketchbooks and eyes wide open, recording how the city works – beyond official plans and smooth facades. Using the Sketch&Draw method and routines inspired by Artful Thinking (Harvard Project Zero) we ask ourselves: Where do people spontaneously intervene in the cityscape – and why?

Which signs tell of scarcity, protest, improvisation or care?

When is an intervention disruptive, when enriching?

Which of these should be encouraged, which questioned, which prevented?

Our sketches become a tool for observing, documenting and reflecting – and a basis for discussing the scope for design, social dynamics and living together in the city.

Andreas M.