<aside> 💡 This page introduces kits around architecture & urban planning.
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Our architecture & city kits are physical tools that explore different scales of built and living environments - designed to help professionals and novices alike discuss, navigate and build everything from cities to public space and neighborhoods.
Above, a classic way to use MethodKit (above discussing a square). Read more how to set up a table like this here → ‣
How we build our homes, neighborhoods, communities and cities matter. Decisions we make as individuals and groups (organizations, businesses, governments, social movements, families, neighborhoods) continue to form and inform our collective future(s). Yet, how do we reach these decisions? How do we discuss and decide? Who gets to discuss and decide? As democratic design, citizen based processes and interdisciplinary projects becomes the new normal, professionals and citizens alike are beginning to respond to the question - how do we ensure everyone (different people, professions and perspectives) can discuss and shape the environments in which they live?
How can we talk about architecture and cities - together?
From investigating how cities operate after dark, to understanding environments for thriving urban ecosystems, contemporary architectural education and practice is dynamic. As disciplinary boundaries are blurred by increasingly complex questions; an ever growing range of expertise, experiences and ways of knowing the world are required. While some architecture and urban planning tools may impose certain solutions or be designed for a specific user group, our idea is to readjust the balance between professionalisation and participation by creating a tool as useful to the professional as it is to the new citizen or stakeholder.
Finding a common language between people, professions and perspectives will be critical to our collective success.
The bundle for Architecture and Cities is a growing collection of kits that investigate the complex nature of the places and spaces we live, work and play, with each kit focusing on a particular scale. Viewed as a whole each kit provides you with a visual overview of the chosen scale, viewed individually, the cards provide an insight into the most important aspects, elements and actions relevant to that scale.
Moving freely between scales and contexts is critical to the success of many projects, as Eliel Saarinen said "Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan." That is why you will find many kits 'nested' within each other. For example in MethodKit for Cities you will find a 'Neighborhood' card, in MethodKit for Neighborhoods you will find a 'street life' card.
As projects are rarely neatly contained within one scale, the ability to do a 'deep dive' into nested scales in a structured way can allow for greater understanding, ideation and collaboration.