Visualising Townscape

Visualising Townscape was a 150 minute celebratory participatory walk, in honour of Gordon Cullen, author of ‘Townscape‘, in which participants were invited to sketch, photograph and record the changing urban townscape, revealed as we walked on a route from St James’ Park, via Parliament Square and St James’ Square to the University of Westminster in Langham Place.

We trod some of the routes that Gordon Cullen and Nicholas Pevsner published in their 1947 Architectural Reviiew article called “Westminster Regained“.

Participants’ remarks included:

“Inspirational and full of potentail.  I shall continue to look into Cullen and walking.”

“Great initiative – I studied Cullen for 7 years but had never tracked his walks or the bserved places that he had drawn with such clarity. Thank you.”

“This could have been a whole day event to allow more sketching time.  I enjoyed it very much.”

Following on from the popular Talking Townscape celebratory walk that we organised on the anniversary of Gordon Cullen‘s death in August2014, we are seeking supporters to bring about an annual Townscape Festival to celebrate Cullen’s  eloquent drawings, images and words.

This article previously appeared on the Rethinking Cities website