THINKING WITH DIAGRAMS IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN.pdfVIP

THINKING WITH DIAGRAMS IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN † Ellen Yi-Luen Do Mark D. Gross Design Machine Group College of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Washington, Seattle Published in Artificial Intelligence Review 15: 135-149, 2001 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Abstract The paper discusses the use of freehand diagrams in architectural design. It examines the roles of diagrams in various contexts: pedagogical books, design studies, designers’ introspective accounts and empirical studies of drawing in design. It offers several examples of thinking with diagrams in design and concludes with a discussion of the requirements for computational support for the diagrams in design thinking. Keywords diagram, sketch, architectural design, protocol analysis, computational support 1. Introduction Diagrams are essential representations for thinking, problem solving, and communication in the design disciplines, in particular those concerned with making physical form: mechanical and civil engineering, graphic design, and architecture and physical planning. In architecture, drawings are the primary form of representation; they carry a design from conception to construction. Except for physical models (which can be considered a kind of three-dimensional drawing) all external design representations in architecture are drawings. 1 Architectural design is ultimately about the configurations, connections, shape, and orientations of physical forms. Even the most abstract design diagrams are early efforts to explore and resolve spatial layout concerns. Architectural diagrams represent not only physical elements, but also forces and flows (e.g., forces of sun and wind and flows of people and materials). Thus arrows, lines, and other symbolic representations of forces and flows appear in architectural diagrams conveying spatial characteristics