A London architect has is working to sketch a new city each day, mining his imagination and experience for fresh ideas for a full year, a practice inspired in part by the failures of modern urban planning.

Peter Barber is sharing the results of his work online, driven by an architectural theorist.”The idea arose from Lewis Mumford’s assertion that modernism has ‘failed to produce even a rough draft for a decent neighbourhood’, and from a pub remark made by my friend and colleague Ben Stringer, who said that you ought to be able to design a city in 10 minutes” — or at least: the idea for one.

These are not meant to be fully polished master plans, but rather an exploration of the shape of cities through quick sketches. They range in scale and region as well, from towns in Spanish ravines to fisherman islands and farming cooperatives in the United Kingdom. Among others, he has imagined a city to wrap the existing city of London, wondering what that might look like as well as how it would function and relate to the historical metropolitan heart of England.

Embedded in this experiment, though, is also a call to action for architects and planners: sketch, think and design, even if it’s speculative, just to keep ideas flowing. “I’m an inveterate sketcher. The project structures that a bit,” says Barber. “In the course of my day it’s a little 10 minute mental workout, kind of light relief too, and a chance to think beyond the here and now. I wonder if the project will remind people about the joy of jotting down a thought in a quick sketch, the sketch book as a place to escape to, a place to be playful, dreamy, speculative, idealistic even.”

Of course, he also hopes some good ideas will come out of the exercise. “We need to think deeply about our priorities and how those might be reflected in the production and arrangement of space and how we want our cities, towns, villages to be designed,” he explains In designing, he is also researching, and thinking about what’s already built. “To a significant extent the layout of our cities, and London is a very good example, are products of neo-liberal economics, the commodification of housing and the arbitrary flow of global capital. In London, which is surely one of the richest cities the world has ever known, this is leading to misery and a segregated city, with 170,000 homeless people and 20,000 empty investment flats, while social housing bequeathed to us by a more idealistic post-war generation is bulldozed.” Of course, one always has to be careful, too: architects are notorious for thinking about city plans first in terms of buildings, and only later in terms of practical considerations.

At a glance, photos of Cafe Yeonnam-dong in South Korea appear to show a flat two-dimensional drawing of a dining space, but these objects are far more 3D than they appear. From the floorboards to the plants to the door handles, every detail of the cafe has been sketched in black on white and brightly lit to show as little dimension as possible. As you might imagine, it’s all highly Instagrammable, making it so popular with locals and tourists that the cafe often has to shut down early because they’ve sold out of food.

The cafe, which opened in July 2017, takes inspiration from a hit Korean television show called W – Two Worlds, in which the protagonist enters a cartoon created by her father. The owners realized they could recreate that feeling in a highly unusual cafe, noting that there’s probably nothing quite like it in the world. The only things that break the illusion are the lamps and the food itself, which stands out in bright contrast, making it look even more appetizing than usual.

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A post shared by Since 2017 / Greem cafe / 2D (@greem_cafe)

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A post shared by Since 2017 / Greem cafe / 2D (@greem_cafe)

All the more reason to wear a vivid ensemble if you can make it to the Yeonman-dong district yourself (or blend in, as some people have chosen to do). If you can’t, Instagram has plenty of opportunities to experience the cafe from afar.

Images via the cafe’s Facebook + Instagram

Strategically placed shadows and highlights make these incredibly intricate nature-themed drawings more than just impressive pages in an artist’s sketchbook. The pieces reveal unexpected depths and textures, and sometimes seem to lift right off the pages and into the real world, as if the sketchbook just couldn’t contain their vitality. Artist Visothkakvei shows off a variety of optical illusion techniques on his Instagram.

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Many of Visothkakvei’s works are contained within the bounds of his books. Though the drawings of flowers, leaves, vines and other organic subjects may look like simple doodles, it’s the way the artist layers them, packs them onto the page and adds shadows that makes them special. Some begin to creep beyond the boundaries of the paper.

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And, in some cases, it’s clear that more than just two-dimensional physical drawing is involved, though the artist doesn’t reveal his secrets. Some of this looks like he’s taken a photograph of his own hand working on the drawings, and layered digital drawing on top of it in a style that matches, making it unclear where the originals end and the digital additions begin.

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A post shared by Visothkakvei (@visothkakvei)

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A post shared by Visothkakvei (@visothkakvei)

Check out lots more of these works, along with videos of the drawings in progress, at Instagram.com/visothkakvei.

Has doodling ever been more creative than this? While most people wouldn’t give a second’s thought to the shape an everyday object’s shadow casts upon adjacent surfaces, artist Vincent Bal looks at them and sees the beginnings of a character or scene. It might be a phone charger, a fallen leaf, a drinking glass or a Christmas ornament, but in its shadow, Bal sees far more than the object itself.

Each of Bal’s quick and clever illustrations is a testament to the creativity of an artist’s brain. Calling his work ‘shadowology,’ Bal plays around with silhouettes and light sources to find inspiration for sketches most people would never dream up. It takes the game of finding shapes in the clouds and applies an artist’s hand to the process, embellishing the shapes into something more.

Calling himself a ‘filmmaker and doodler and procrastinator from Belgium’, Bal shares his work on his popular Instagram account and sells prints on Etsy.

Scribbled sketches seem to leap off the page and hover in mid-air, filling out in three dimensions, in this impressive series of sculptures made from bent wire. Artist David Oliveira captures the essence of his subjects, whether they’re people or mountain lions, by studying their anatomy and translating their sense of vitality and movement into minimalist life-sized forms.

Oliveira sees his works as existing on some other plane, like an abstracted echo of the physical bodies that exist in our reality. Twisting, looping and curving black wires, he sketches in air, and the resulting sculptures look as if they’ve been peeled off a piece of paper, enlarged and skewed like skeletons that were hidden inside each subject all along.

As viewers, we look at these gestural impressions of living creatures and our minds fill in the blanks, suggesting to us what the real-life subjects must have looked like, how they must have moved. The sculptures are particularly effective when they’re hung from the ceiling in transparent thread, seeming to float.