11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013

Track 3 | Conceptual Representation | Exploring the layout of the built environment

Thinking it through: the importance of study sketches and the implications for design education

Michael J. McGlynn

Keywords: study sketches; design thinking; design education

ABSTRACT

Study sketches, the loose and open-ended drawings that designers use, have been essential to the design process since the time of Leonardo da Vinci. The extent to which they remain essential to the design process, though, is the extent to which they possess unique qualities that facilitate design thinking. To make this determination, I review research on the relation between sketching and design thinking in the light of findings in cognitive science.
After distinguishing between two types of design drawings, the analytic diagram and the study sketch, I outline findings in cognitive science that confirm the need for graphic media to support a designer’s thought processes given certain cognitive limitations. Next, I summarize the research of Fish (1990, 2004), Goldschmidt (2003), and Herbert (1993) who have argued that, beyond a one-way recording of visual mental imagery, expert designers use study sketches interactively to augment their thought processes. Three unique and interrelated qualities of study sketches emerge that facilitate design thinking – immediacy, ambiguity, and mutability.
Following a description of each of these qualities and the way in which expert designers exploit each quality to further design development, I highlight ways in which design educators might assist novice designers in developing proficiency in the use of both study sketches and analytic diagrams. These include teaching the loose application of drawing conventions along with freehand graphic projection methods, the use of freehand analytic diagrams to transform concrete architectural precedents into abstract exemplars, and the use of context and exploration drawings in the graphic – cognitive cycle (Herbert, 1993, pp. 108-113).

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AUTHOR

Michael J. McGlynn

Department of Architecture, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

Michael McGlynn is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS, USA. Professor McGlynn's scholarship is an outgrowth of his teaching and is pursued in three interrelated areas: Sustainable Architecture Theory and Pedagogy, where he seeks to understand the scope of sustainable architectural design and the implications for teaching and learning; Integrated Design Pedagogy, where he investigates integrated approaches to teaching architectural technology and design; and Design Communication and the Design Process, where he investigates the role of diagramming and study sketching in both design thinking and communication.

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