Last week on Saturday, me and @mintvilla held a public workshop as part of the Department of Transportation's (DOT) Summer Streets festival. Our company Base 15 Studio was invited by the DOT's Urban Events team to the yearly event, where dozens of institutions and organizations engage the greater NYC public concerning their work and message.

Since our company's specialty is cultural development and engagement concerning design and architecture, we whipped up a fun program that people of all ages could partake in.

Pastel Urbanism

The premise was simple – draw your cities and urban features onto the chalkboard blocks! Both children and adults were invited to try their hand at some unique facades and city elements. We wanted to provide a fun and approachable way to experiment with and discuss ideas of urbanism and large-scale change with all age groups.

As you can see, these young'ns might be more talented than professional architects... ;)

It was incredible to see people who have never had any formal training in building or landscape design try out what they think would be interesting buildings or constructs. We expected many of them to draw existing buildings in NYC as reference but we highly underestimated their creative motivations. Some drew vibrant skyscrapers. Some remade the subway cars. Some even drew urban monsters like Godzilla and Mothra to terrorize others' designs.