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“On Visual Design Thinking: The Vis

Kids of Architecture

Article in Design Studies · April 1994

DOI: 10.1016/0142-694X(94)90022-1

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Gabriela Goldschmidt
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On visual design thinking: the vis kids
of architecture
Gabriela Goldschmidt, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning,
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel

Designers invariably use imagery to generate new form combinations which

they represent through sketching. But they also do the reverse: they sketch
to generate images of forms in their minds. Common belief regards such
activity as non-rational. In contrast, we assert that interactive imagery
through sketching is a rational mode of reasoning, characterized by
systematic exchanges between conceptual and figural arguments. Cognitive
science, strongly dominated by a linguistic paradigm, has yet to recognize
the paramount role of visual reasoning in many instances of problem
solving; and in design tool-making, computational and otherwise, we must
learn to optimize rather than bypass intuitive visuality.

Keywords: visual thinking, designing, imagery, sketching, architecture

hen reflecting on the nature of thinking, most people associ-

W ate it primarily with words, with language. When visual

thinking is considered, however, we tend to concentrate on
visual and almost forget thinking, which fades into the background. Visual
thinking is tricky. What does it really mean? It turns out that different
constituencies read different meanings and connotations into this term
and we can, at the risk of somewhat over generalizing, elaborate on
representative approaches.

1 A r n h e l m , R Towards a
Psychology of Art University of
California Press, Berkeley, CA
(1966)
2 Arlllhllm, R Visual Thinking
University of California Press,
Berkeley, CA (1969)
1 Visual thinking
For a layperson, visual thinking is more or less equivalent to visual
perception, which means the registration or representation in the mind of
information that reaches us through the senses. The difference between
vision and perception is that perception is somewhat of an interpretation
of 'straight' vision: it turns out that we always manipulate the impressions
of the world that our optical organ, the eye, delivers to the brain.
For those involved in the study of perception, mostly psychologists
(including art psychologists, see for example Arnheiml'2), the challenge

158 0142--694X/94/020158-17 ~ 1994 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

 lies in explicating the universal rules that govern perception. Ground
breaking work in this field was carried out by Gestalt psychologists in the
first decades of this century. Although their theories have been largely
discredited 3, the original goals are shared by contemporary research 4. The
field attempts to explain the selectivity that we exercise when taking note
of that which we see: what our memory picks up or prioritizes and what it
phases out or sends to the background ('goodness of form'); the circum-
stances under which 'optical illusions' are created, and generally how we
organize light, colour, contour etc. into meaningful pattern, figure and
form.

For the typical AI researcher and for cognitive psychologists who are
mainly interested in computational models of cognitive operations, visual
3 Uttal, W R On Seeing Form thinking is pretty much vision tout court 5. They explain how the external
Lawrence Edbaum Associates,
Hillsdale. NJ (1988)
world is codified in our brain via retinal impressions, how we recognize
4 Robertson, L C 'From gestalt shapes and how the processes involved can be simulated computationally.
to neo-gestalt' in T J Krwpp and
L C Robertson (Eds)
Approaches to Cognition: Con- For the mainstream cognitive scientist, perception, and visual thinking,
trasts and Controversies Law-
rence Edbaum Associates, Hills- have an ambivalent status. Some think that perception has little to do with
dale, NJ (1986) pp 159-188
5 Marr, O Vision Freeman, San cognition and should not be studied in the framework of cognitive
Francisco (1982) psychology. A few important recent anthologies on thinking do not
6 Stemberg, R J and Smith, E
E (Eds) The Psychology of Hu- devote a single chapter to 'things visual '6. Others accept perception as an
man Thought Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge (1988)
extension of vision 7 and the tendency in both is to carry out very
70sherson, D N, Koe=lyn, S M elemental studies: it is the detailed mechanisms of these processes and not
end Hollerbach, J M (Eds),
Visual Cognition and Action: an so much their significance to thought in general that are under scrutiny,
Invitation to Cognitive Science much at the expense of a comprehensive and integrated view of thinking 3.
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
(1990) Thinking is, in mainstream contemporary cognitive science, strongly
8 Kaulmann, G Imagery, Lan-
guage and Cognition Univer- identified with language: its acquisition, production and development.
sltetsforlaget, Bergen (1980) The linguistic paradigm in cognitive psychology is so overwhelming and so
9 Fodor, J A 'Imagistic repre-
sentation' in N. Block (Ed) Imag- unwilling to accept the notion of an equally relevant visual, nonlinguistic
ery MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
(1981) pp 63-86 (First published
component in cognition, that one frustrated critic was led to refer to it as
in Fodor, J A Language and 'sweeping linguisitic imperialism' (Kaufmann s, p 18). Thinking in pictures
Thought Crowell, New York
(1975) is seen as developmentally rudimentary, a prelinguistic phase of cognitive
10 Kmmlyn, S M Image and functioning, befitting the young and the inexperienced. In the words of a
Mind Harvard University Press,
Cambddge, MA (1960) leading cognitive scientists: 'children have pictures where the adults have
1 1 Koulyn, S M Ghosts in the
Mind's Machine Norton, New words' (Fodor 9, p 64).
York (1983)
12 Flnke, R A Creative Imag-
ery: Discoveries and Inventions Somewhat of an exception are studies in the fields of imagery and
in Visualization Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale,
creativity. In these domains there appears to be an a priori premise that
NJ (1990) not only is there such a thing as visual, pictorial or quasipictorial reasoning
13 FINite, R A, Ward, T B and
Smith, S M Creative Cognition: (mediated by 'the mind's eye']°'ll), but that this type of reasoning is
Theory Research and Application instrumental in creative problem solving and invention 12A3. Proponents
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
(1992) argue that being unbound by conventions (of which grammar is an

Visual thinking 159


14 Block, N (Ed) /magery MIT
Press, Cambridge, MA (1981)
1 5 Rolling=, M Mental Imagery
Yale University Press, New
Haven (1989)
16 "n/,, M The Imagery Debate
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
(1~1)
17 Millet, A Imagery in Sc~en-
t/tic Thought MIT Press, Cam-
bridge, MA (1986)
160
example in the case of language), imagery tolerates idiosyncracy in
thought and supports novel forms of synthesis 8. There still is a debate over
the nature of visual imagery14-t6: how pictorial is it, if at all? This is a
question we shall return to, as it is at the heart of the present inquiry.
Finally, a look at what visual thinking means to the designer, and
specifically to the architect. The need for visualization is recognized by
almost all designers in diverse fields, from the arts to engineering. First a
caveat: a visual representation, in two- or three-dimensions, which is
made for the purpose of communication (with clients, colleagues or other
interested parties) or to facilitate evaluation, as important and as relevant
to design as it may be, is not what we mean by visual thinking. Rather, it is
the production of ideas, the reasoning that gives rise to ideas and helps
bring about the creation of form in design (as opposed to its rendering)
that is of interest here. In engineering and in science there are rare, but
famous, cases of unusual discoveries and breakthroughs that are attri-
buted to insight via visual imagery like, for example, the discovery of the
D N A molecule structure by Watson and Crick through the metaphoric
image of the double helix. Miller 17 has shown that mental imagery, often
visual, played a decisive role in the work of several of the greatest
scientists of the twentieth century. Most scientists and engineers, how-
ever, will probably claim that the use of imagery is rare and restricted to
'special cases' and in fact, most of them would shy away from either
entertaining images in their design work or admitting to so doing . . .
In architecture, things are somewhat different. It can be safely claimed
that most architects routinely employ imagistic reasoning and do so
openly and with no remorse. For most architects the use of visual thinking
or imagery in the making of form represents the artistic aspect of
designing, seen as characterized by intuition, responding to aesthetic and
emotional needs and not necessarily to rational ones. The design process
is, of course, regarded as also including rational aspects, subject to logical,
functional and 'scientific' analysis and compatible with implementation
requirements. The balance between these two perceived poles of design-
ing, and expectations concerning their respective contribution, depends
primarily on the design culture that one subscribes to. Accordingly, the
visual aspects of designing meet with applause at one end of the cultural
spectrum and with apologies at the other end.
When taken together, all of the above basic approaches to visual thinking,
from its appreciation as a creative component of thinking in certain views
to its total depreciation or relegation to the realm of basic and even
primitive thinking, a certain picture emerges that describes the following
Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994

18 Fal,t, G J 'Synthetic and an-
alytic thought: similarities and dif-
ferences among art and science
students' Creativity Research
Journal Vol 4 No 2 (1991) 145-
155
19 Holyoak, K J 'Problem solv-
ing' in O N Oeherlon and E E
Smith (Eds) Thinking: an Invite-
tion to Cognitive Science, Vol 3
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
(1990) pp 117-146
Visual thinking
dichotomy: there are two modes of thinking, which we could codify as
'analytic-rational' and 'synthetic-nonrational'. In a somewhat exaggerated
vein, the former is attributed to 'serious' adult information processing,
epitomized in scientific thinking. It is supposed to be conscious, verbal,
systematic and intellectual. Nonanalytic or synthetic thinking, on the
other hand, is said to be characteristic of the arts. It is believed to be 'a
loose, undifferentiated, affective and less logical way of knowing and
understanding' (Feist TM, p 146). It is highly intuitive, visual (or auditory)
and unsystematic, and not necessarily conscious. This dichotomy certainly
reflects popular belief, but as we have seen, it pervades scientific theories
of thinking as well, in a variety of fields (Neuroscience, with its theories of
hemispherical brain specialization, is left out of this discussion.).
We believe that notions of visual thinking that equate it to vision or even
to perception are incorrect. We think that visual thinking operations are
in no way, developmentally or cognitively, of a lower level compared to
linguistic thinking. Finally, we disagree that visual thinking, as a synthetic
process, is nonrational or unsystematic. What is visual thinking, then, and
in particular, what is its role in architectural designing?
We agree with the position that visual thinking is the production of
thought via visual imagery. We also agree that it is found more frequently
in creative thinking, or in problem solving of the type that requires
insight 19, normally due to the novelty of a task. But we do not think that it
should be looked for only in exceptional instances. In fact, it is quite
common in all brands of thinking where one is expected to create
something new, not necessarily a major breakthrough. What better
exemplifies such thinking, or problem solving, than design and architectu-
ral design in particular? In the following discussion we shall claim that in
the preliminary 'front edge' of addressing a new design task architects
think visually, and that such visual thinking, even when it is 'intuitive' and
involves tacit knowledge, is perfectly rational and highly systematic. If this
claim is adequately substantiated, we may begin to question the accuracy
of the analytic-synthetic, or scientific-artistic dichotomy. A bridge be-
tween them would provide a major gateway to sophisticated concepts of
design and its practice in an era in which a major paradigmatic shift
appears inevitable.
2 Sketching
Most architects engage in free-hand sketching at the front edge of
designing, and quite a number of them make a considerable number of
sketches at that phase. A fair amount of this prolific sketching activity is
aimed at simply recording and representing thoughts that are already in
161

20 Shepard, R N and Metzler,
J 'Mental rotations of three
dimensional objects' Sc/ence Vol
181 (1971) 701-703
21 A n ~ , . b e , e E U and von
Write, G H (Eds) Ludwig W~gen-
stein: Zettel University of Califor-
nia Press, Berkeley, CA (1970)
2 2 Werthelmer, M Productive
Thinking Harper Torchbooks,
New York, (1971/1945)
162
the mind by committing them to paper. In these instances, sketching does
not differ from other symbolic representations, like writing for example.
Moreover, sketching by designers does not differ in such areas from
sketching undertaken by others, including lay people, who utilize it for a
variety of purposes to diagram or depict abstract or concrete states (for
example a family tree or an electric circuit scheme), maps and plans (such
as instructions for finding the way or furniture layouts), signs or things,
live or inanimate, real or imaginary. But not all sketches that architects
make belong to this category. Some of the sketching does not follow ideas
in the mind but instead, precedes them. In other words, architects quite
often engage in sketching not to record an idea, which is not there yet, but
to help generate it. This is the kind of sketching we want to pay attention
to: it reflects visual thinking, in fact it is visual thinking. Why is sketching
considered to be visual thinking? What can we learn from close scrutiny of
sketching? To answer these questions, we return to imagery.
2.1 Imagery
The view that 'seeing' through the mind's eye resembles seeing as it occurs
via the physiological eye has gained momentum in the last two decades.
Many theoretical and empirical studies have contributed to this notion,
and we shall mention only two of the most influential ones, i.e. Shepard's
mental rotation experiments 2° and Kosslyn's computational model of
imagery 11. Despite the similarities in processing mechanisms, seeing and
imaging are not one and the same thing, however, and we choose to quote
Wittgenstein for a concise, yet cogent illumination of this point (Note 637,
Anscombe and von Write 2l, p 11)
I learn the concept 'seeing' along with the description of what I see. | learn to
observe and to describe what I observe. I learn the concept 'to have an image' in a
different context. The descriptions of what is seen and what is imaged are indeed of
the same kind, and a description might be of the one just as much as of the other;
but otherwise the concepts are thoroughly different. The concept of imaging is
rather like one of doing than of receiving...
Wittgenstein's emphasis on doingin imagery versus receiving in seeing is
of crucial importance, because it implies the fabricationof visual displays,
independent of any displays that one might have an opportunity to
perceive in the external world. In a nutshell, this explains the instrumental
role that imagery plays in problem solving, especially where the problems
have a high degree of novelty. A concrete example that will also bring us a
little closer to architectural design, is the classic parallelogram area
finding problem that Wertheimer 22 has written about to exemplify what
the Gestaltists called 'productive thinking'. Wertheimer presented a
parallelogram to young children who did not know how to calculate its
Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994
 area, but who had already learned how to find the area of a rectangle.
Children who saw a way to transform the parallelogram into a rectangle
succeeded in solving the problem. Visual strategies used to identify the
relationship between the parallelogram and the rectangle that equals it in
area differed slightly, but essentially they all hinged on an imagined
subdivision of the parallelogram shape into smaller shapes that could be
rearranged to create a rectangle. The lines that subdivided the parallelo-
gram and the rectangle into which it was transformed were displayed in
imagery, and the children who read them off that display used this
information to solve the problem. In more complex shapes than the
parallelogram and with less precisely defined tasks, a variety of displays
may emerge in imagery and the information that can be 'read off' them
may be equally diversified. A case in point are Rorschach cards which,
due to the complexity of their shapes, are interpreted in many different
ways by those who contemplate them.

Why, we might ask ourselves, are meaningless shapes like those on

Rorschach cards and other arbitrary shapes like cloud formations, for
instance, at all 'pregnant' (to use a Gestalt term) with potentially
meaningful configurations to at least some observers? The answer is that
they contain clues that can be isolated, possibly recombined, and de-
ciphered as reminiscent of something that is meaningful in a particular
context. If the context is a problem that one attempts to solve, such clues
could help define a specific 'problem space' in which a search for a
solution is likely to be productive. Clues are useful only if they can be
associated with something that is relevant to that which a person is looking
for or preoccupied with. In other words, a clue must be able to trigger
some relevant information that is stored in the memory but that is
otherwise difficult or impossible to tap. If you are trying to think of
someone's name, it may help if you are told that the name starts with an
A, but this clue is useless if you never knew the name in the first place.
Visual clues work similarly.

Design tasks are different from the parallelogram problem or the name
finding problem in that the latter are fairly 'well-defined' problems,
whereas in design problems are usually rather 'ill-defined' and must be
better defined, or framed, as part of the solution effort (note that we are
not suggesting a temporal sequence requiring that problems be defined
before they can be solved!). It is therefore quite difficult to imagine that a
designer would often be fortunate enough to come upon a suitable
external visual display, one containing features that could be 'read off' as
meaningful clues to a task at hand. Remember that we are talking about
the first phase of a design search, before the designer has established the

Visual thinking 163


2 3 Goldlmhmldt, Gi 'The dialec-
tics of sketching' Creativity Re-
search Journal Vol 4 No 2 (1991)
123-143
164
form, or forms, of the entity that is being designed. How then is imagery
utilized? Or is it really used at all?
2.2 Sketching as interactive imagery
Faced with the unlikelihood of being assisted by readily available displays
in an early design search, the designer can resort to a measure that is both
economical and potentially very helpful: he or she can manufacture
germane displays! Such displays are the sketches that architects (and some
other designers) are in the habit - indeed, sometimes the obsessive habit -
of producing at the 'front edge of designing'. As pointed out earlier, the
sketches that are of interest in terms of visual thinking are mainly those
that are being made before it becomes clear what the design concept is,
although partial descriptions of functional, spatial or symbolic properties
of some of its components (or even the entity as a whole) may already
exist. It is our belief that the purpose of this early sketching activity is
primarily to avail oneself of potentially meaningful clues. If picked up,
these clues can be used to form and to inform emerging design concepts.
To pick up clues, the designer uses imagery in a mode very similar to the
one we saw in the case of the parallelogram: one reads off the sketch more
information than was invested in its making. This becomes possible
because when we put down on paper dots, lines and other marks, new
combinations and relationships among these elements are created that we
could not have anticipated or planned for. We discover them in the sketch
as it is being made, and some of these new configurations can potentially
provide useful clues. Imagery makes it possible to see certain selections of
dots, lines and marks as something meaningful. Seeing something as
something else (which is not there physically) is the essence of imagery,
and since in this case imaging is brought about through sketching, we call
this process interactive imagery 23.
Single and isolated sketches are a rarity. More often, scores of sketches
are made by a designer in successive spells. In a series of rapid sketches
the designer transforms images in a cyclic manner: each sketch generates
images in the mind, and these images inform a continued search for
greater coherence that leads the designer to transform the previous image
by adding, deleting, modifying or replacing certain parts. If not aban-
doned for insufficient feedback in terms of clues, a cycle is typically
consumed only when sufficient coherence and completion are reached.
We know that this is the case when a certain problem or subproblem,
whether explicit or implicit, has attained a satisficing solution, at least
tentatively. It is of great importance to recognize that with almost no
exception, design concepts do not appear, in their totality, all at once.
Instead, they require a process that involves step-by-step transformations.
Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994

24 Koselyn, S M, Pinker S,
Smith, G E end Shwetlz, S P
'On the demystification of mental
imagery' in N Block (Ed) Imagery
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
(1981) 131-150 (First published
in The Behavioral and Brain Sci-
ences, Vol 2 Cambridge Universi-
ty Press (1979)
2S Plyehyn, Z 'The imagery de-
bate: Analog media versus tacit
knowledge' in N Block (Ed) Im-
agery MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
(1981) pp 151-206
26 Goel, V 'Ill-structured repre-
sentations' for ill-structured prob-
lems' in Proceedings of the 14th
Annual Conference of the Cngni-
t/ve Scien~ Soc/ety, Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale,
NJ (1992) pp 130-135
27 Perklne, D N The Mind's
Best Work Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, MA (1981)
Visual thinking
Not all the steps are sequential, nor are all of them necessarily recorded in
sketch form or even in consciousness, but they must take place. This fits in
beautifully with what we know about the formation of images. In
Kosslyn's24 view, images are formed, not retrieved in toto from memory
and elsewhere he says: 'Mental images are transformed in small steps, so
the images pass through intermediate stages of transformation' (quoted by
Pylyshyn25, p 171). The difference between 'ordinary' imagery and
interactive imagery is that in the case of the latter, in the process of
designing, images are not retrieved from memory at all. One can only
retrieve an image of something that was previously perceived. In the early
phase of design the entity that is being designed does not yet exist and
therefore could have never been perceived. That is why sketching is so
helpful and why imagery takes on a new dimension when we see it as an
interactive process of symbolic representation.
Since the sketching we refer to is not meant for communication with
others, the designer can be extremely brief and vague and use some sort of
a personal 'shorthand' notation in the imagistic process of reasoning about
the forms he or she elicits through sketching. It is necessary to be brief
because speed facilitates transformations, whereas vagueness contributes
to an open-ended and indeterministic representation that lends itself to
many more possible interpretations than would otherwise be the case.
Kaufmann 8 explains that imagery is so well suited for the representation
of information in novel tasks because 'due to its pictorial aspect, [it is]
more idiosyncratic, varied and flexible as [compared] to rules' (p 118),
which are necessary by definition in representation via language. This is
an important notion that we should reflect on for a moment, as it may
shed light on the inability of computerized drawing techniques, so far, to
compete with free-hand sketching as instrumental design aids in prelimin-
ary phases 26. To date, computers operate well on an algorithmic basis.
Some algorithms are very sophisticated and rather complex and fuzzy. But
they are still rule-based and incapable of making the leaps that imagery
can make to create a match between a totally new pictorial configuration
and some previously stored information that may be encoded in an
altogether different way. We also want to bear in mind that, as pointed
out by Perkins 27, economy is an important factor in creative behaviour.
Free-hand sketching is economical because it can be carried out very fast,
but also because transformations are particularly easy to achieve if layers
of transparent (or translucent) paper are superimposed one on top of the
other, as is usually the case in contemporary architectural practice. Using
the layering technique a designer can sketch only that which is being
transformed, while that which remains intact is abstracted from a previous
sheet to fit into a new composite image. At the same time all former
165

28 "rJano, Y 'Perception of ro-
tated forms' Cognitive Psycholo-
gyVo121 (1989) 1-59
29 Fllhbeln, E Conceptele
Figurale Acad. Rep. Pop. Rornine
(1963)
30 Mardottl, M A 'Geometrical
reasoning as a dialectic between
the figural and conceptual
aspects' Structural Topology Vol
18 (1992) 9-18
166
images can still be monitored, many of them simultaneously, and man-
oeuvring among them is very simple. Computerized tools have yet to
emulate these extraordinary attributes of free-hand sketching before they
can hope to take its place in designing.
2.3 The figure-concept dialectics
Earlier we mentioned that students of imagery have been debating for the
longest time whether imagery is a pictorial or a descriptional mode of
representation and reasoning 14-16. The debate is largely theoretical and
tends to reflect philosophical stances that so far, have been neither been
confirmed nor disconfirmed by empirical research. Our own position is
that picture and description are so hopelessly intertwined in imagery that
is is impossible to claim that a representational process is purely one or the
other. In fact, to substantiate the claim that visual thinking is perfectly
rational and highly systematic, we need to show that imagistic reasoning
that takes place at the time the designer makes preliminary sketches is, in
addition to being pictorial, also descriptional. The imagery literature uses
a variety of terms as synonyms for pictorial and descriptional (for
example, analogical and propositiona128), but we prefer to use figural and
conceptual, because these terms can be combined to form the powerful
hybrid expression figural concept, which was coined by Fishbein 29 and
elaborated by Marriotti 3° in the context of a study of children's under-
standing of geometrical concepts. To demonstrate the conceptual and
figural qualities of interactive imagery in designing, we shall briefly
present an empirical case of front edge designing and sketching, where we
can inspect the designer's 'on line' reasoning while at work.
3 Case study: from signature to kindergarten plan
In line with our interest in quotidian rather than rare and special instances
of design, we chose an example from an exercise by a novice designer,
Larry, a young architecture student. Larry's task was to design a
kindergarten on a given urban lot. The following vignette is an account of
the single design session in which Larry generated the preliminary design
of the kindergarten. Later it was followed to completion with minor
changes.
Larry was well familiar with the givens: the site and the programme. He
had a plan of the L shaped site, with a slight slope, flanked by three-storey
residential buildings on three sides and accessed from the street at the
bottom, narrow side of the lot. He also familiarized himself with the
programme which called for three activity spaces, auxiliary spaces and
outdoor play areas. In fact he had already completed a design for the
kindergarten, which was approved by his teachers: the design was based
Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994
 r

Figure 1 Preliminary design,

rejected by designer

on small cubic elements that were aggregated to form a building (Figure

1). Larry did not like that design which he found too reminiscent of some
of his classmates' schemes, and decided to discard it and start anew. At
the point in which we join him, he sits in front of a blank sheet of paper,
not knowing where to start and what he wants to do. He grabs a pencil and
starts to doodle. There is no way he can explore a design proposition,
because he has not yet generated one; but the urge to make marks on
paper is irresistible and what he produces is his signature. 'I really like my
signature,' he explained later (Figure 2 (a)). He repeats the signature,
then rehearses it a third time with slight variations. He does it again and
again, until his sheet of paper is so full of graphic marks that it becomes a
graphic display. Larry scans the display in search for a clue, something
that might be useful to him in the task he confronts. The search for a clue
is largely unselfconscious, as Larry certainly has not jotted down his
signature in the expectation that this would lead to a design solution. The
display he has created is random and could have been any other
representation; his preoccupation with his signature caused this particular
display to come into being. Could it eventually serve his search? We shall
find out as we continue to follow Larry's design venture.

He crosses out the seventh signature, and proceeds to sign once more.
This time something in the fresh scribble catches his eye, and he
contemplates the little figure for long minutes. 'Hey,' he says, 'if I do it
right, the two letters of my signature enclose space.' He picks a heavier
pencil from his pencil-tray and goes over the signature with a heavy line.

Visual thinking 167

Figure 2 First sketch

The enclosed space is clearly visible now, and it seems to suggest a

division into different portions. This comes as a revelation and in order to
confirm his discovery, Larry produces one last (ninth) sample of the
signature: it encircles space. Could that space, so randomly generated,
possibly be interpreted as the embryo of a plan? Would it lead to design
ideas for the kindergarten? O r is this an outrageous proposition that we
should at best regard as a charming but insignificant anecdote? Let us look
at evidence from other, more mature designers, who described their
design process. O n e architect testifies (Goldschmidt 23, p 129):

When I sit down to work, it's h a r d . . . When 1 first start, I make a lot of drawings. I
don't understand what I'm doing until I draw it a few times, and then it becomes
clear to me what I'm trying to do, and then I can begin to work on i t . . .

A n o t h e r architect gives a similar account of her experiences at the very

front edge of the design process (Goldschmidt23):

I can't get very far with just thinking about it without drawing s o m e t h i n g . . . I like
to have a lot of lines on the page. I like fuzzy stuff. I can see things in it more than I

168 Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994


31 Aelto, A 'Abstract art and
architecture' in B Hoelll (Edito-
rial delegate for the Board of
Trustees, Institute for History and
Theory of Architecture at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Tech-
nology) Alvar Aalto: Synopsis Bir-
kh&user Vedag, Basel (1970) pp
17-18 (reprinted from Domus
(1957) lap 223-225)
Visual thinking
can in hard-lined things. So, sometimes I just get a lot of lines out and then I start to
see things in it. A lot of times I pick up things I think are important.
The habit, or shall we call it technique, of seemingly purposeless
'doodling' at the outset of a design task is not restricted to 'ordinary'
designers, as we can learn from the following extract from Alvar Aalto's
commentary of his design processes (Aalto 31, pp 17-18):
When I have to solve an architectural problem.., t h e . . , demands.., are so
numerous that they form a maze which cannot be worked out by rational methods.
The ensuing complexity prevents the basic architectural idea from taking shape. In
such cases I proceed in an irrational way as follows:... [I] busy myself with
something that can best be described as abstract art. I start drawing, giving free rein
to my instinct, and suddenly the basic idea is born, a starting point which links the
numerous, often contradicting elements already mentioned, and brings them into
harmony with each o t h e r . . .
Larry proceeded to transform the signature figure into something that had
more plan-like qualities, and he drew it so as to fit into a small-scale
tracing of the site contour plan (Figure 2 (b)). 'This seems right' he
muttered, 'I think I can work it out.' It was not too difficult for Larry to
test the hypothetical analogy between his transformed signature and a
plausible plan for the kindergarten. He had already mastered the require-
ments and the constraints and could therefore evaluate the validity of a
potential solution very fast, in terms of adequacy of space, location of
functions etc. There was still plenty of room on his sheet of paper and he
traced the site contour at a larger scale (Figure 2 (c)). The smaller figure
had to be translated into actual, functional spaces that correspond to the
demands of the programme. The transition was easily achieved and Larry
enjoyed working on it. The long curved lines, the circular spaces,
contrasted sharply with his former scheme of cubes. 'This is exactly what I
want,' he said, relieved. 'The hell with all those neat, straight lines,
regimented angles, orderly squares. Curved is beautiful!' Before long he
produced a sketch plan that commanded the site and suggested distinct
spaces and areas. By doing so, he also answered a question we might have
asked: why an odd display such as the signature? If he indeed needed a
graphic display in order to make headway, could he not have used any
other random display, including an external one, such as a picture on the
wall? Apparently not. It appears that the signature, which was characte-
rized by round and curved lines, hit on a desire to liberate himself from
straight lines and angles, a desire Larry became fully aware of only after
the possibility presented itself when discovered in the curvilinear signa-
ture figure. This does not mean that he could not have discovered another
covert desire that would have given rise to a different solution, had he
generated another random display, in which he would have picked up
169
Figure 3 Second sketch
32 Broadbent, G Design in
Architecture, Wiley, Chichester,
UK (1973)
170
other clues. A picture on the wall can provide a similar source of usable
clues, but randomness is much higher and therefore probabilities are
lower. We also lose the shortcuts that a self-generated display provides
because of the likelihood that what we generate relates, possibly uncon-
sciously, to what is meaningful to us, because of the interactive imagistic
processes that are involved. External displays, however, and not only
graphic ones, can indeed play an important role especially when the
observer is an experienced 'decoder of clues.' One famous example from
the domain of architecture is the chapel at Ronchamp by Le Corbusier.
According to Broadbent 32, Le Corbusier explained that the shape of the
roof in that building was derived from a shell of a crab that way lying on
his desk for a long time. We do not have online evidence concerning the
design of the Ronchamp chapel, and we can therefore only postulate on
the accuracy of the analogical relationship and its role in the design
process. The difference between online data and reconstructed accounts
will be discussed shortly.
Larry has arrived at something that was very nearly a plan. He could tell
that the areas were about right, but he had to be sure. There was also the
slight slope to take care of: where could he introduce stairs? A n d what
would the outdoor areas be like? Where should the main entrance be?
Larry pulled out a clean sheet of tracing paper and overlaid it on his
Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994
Figure 4 Third sketch

sketch. His new drawing no longer has 'lines'; it has lines that stand for
walls, for stairs and for landscaping elements (Figure 3). Forms were
checked against the functions they were expected to accommodate and
against the meanings they were to convey. He drew an arrow to represent
the north, which would enable him to think more clearly about light
penetration. He measured and calculated on the working sheet: this was
his test-tube and he was adjusting its content to produce the exact reaction
he desired.

When it was time to think in more detail about the three-dimensional

aspects of his design, Larry resorted to a third sheet of paper (Figure 4).
He thought about flat roofs at different heights, and drew dashed lines to
represent the changes in ceiling height. He knew that the different
segments of the ceiling need to be structurally supported, and he added
columns where necessary. H e worked out in detail the stair layout in the
enclosed round courtyard he had created, so as to make it possible to
climb out to the raised backyard. Later he added landscaped stairs from

Visual thinking 171

Figure 5 Aerial view of model. Left, with roof, right: with roof removed

the street that would make it possible to access the backyard without
going through the building. The basic design was brought to near
completion and Larry stopped sketching and drawing. He switched to
model-building (Figure 5), a process that allowed him to further investi-
gate issues hitherto not tackled (windows, for example) and to make last
modifications that would later find their way into the final drawings he
made. The finished project, in form of a model and presentation
drawings, was submitted for review. During the review no mention was
made of the signature. Larry himself did not think it was relevant; for him
the process started at a later phase and he explained that he wanted his
kindergarten to have smooth, rolling lines, because it was meant for such
tender, gentle souls for whom straight lines and angles might be too
aggressive. If it were not for the online records of the design process, we
would never have known how it all came into being.

Is our account of Larry's process unduly long and detailed? We argue that
it is impossible to understand design thinking in depth without zooming in
on episodes like the one we have described. Neglecting details can lead to

172 Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994


33 Goldschmklt, G 'On figural
conceptualization in architectural
design' in R Treppl (Ed)
Cybernetics and Systems Re-
search '92 World Scientific, Sing-
apora (1992) pp 599-606
Visual thinking
loss of essential facts; instead we may get, as is often the case, after-the-
fact rationalizations based on reconstruction. In a discussion with Larry
about his process shortly after it was completed, he remembered the
signature as something he had jotted down after he had already worked
out the initial plan, because he recognized a certain similarity between the
overall 'gestalt' of both confgurations. He was surprised and moved when
presented with his own protocol. But we should not be surprised. In fact,
the misrepresentation of the chronological order of events in Larry's
memory matches our theory: at any given moment, we endeavour to link
together that which 'makes sense' to us in terms of a particular task, in a
given context. When the search was over, Larry's implicit task was to
'design' a credible rationale for his design. Accounting for forms by
relating them to 'user characteristics' is considered good practice and to
Larry the curved lines in a building meant for children, responded to the
'tenderness of these young souls.' In a reconstruction, this is a perfectly
logical move, just as during the process, when the tenderness of the
children has not yet made a conscious appearance in the 'problem space'
in which Larry was working, curved lines as suggested by the signature
figure were a perfectly logical move for a designer who wished to do away
with a contrasting image of straight lines because to his taste, too many of
his friends had already used it.
Both the online moves that we unveiled in the process and the postfactum
reconstruction moves relate figure to concept. The difference is the
following: in a posterior explanation, we always start with a concept, and
then match a figure to it. Larry's case is no exception. In most cases we
deal with macro concepts and holistic forms: here the concept is that of
the children's tenderness and the forms - the world of organic, rounded
lines. During the process things are not as orderly. The designer may lack
an overall concept for quite some time, or else no search for it would be
necessary. Incomplete concepts come to mind and likewise, partial forms
are generated, both randomly and intentionally. Since a search might start
anywhere, and since we have shown that in sketching interactive imagistic
processes are the order of the day, there is no predetermined temporal
sequence: a concept may lead to a figure just as a figure might lead to a
concept. In fact, when design protocols (while preliminary sketching
activities occur) are parsed into the smallest possible units of reasoning
and encoded as either figural or conceptual, we find approximately equal
numbers of conceptual and figural arguments 33. We also find that in
chains of interrelated arguments of this kind, the numbers of those
starting with figure and proceeding to concept equals the number of those
where concept precedes figure. Furthermore, we notice that in these
typical instances of visual thinking in designing, there is a regular and
173

34 Fish, J and Scrivener, S
'Amplifying the mind's eye:
sketching and visual cognition'
Leonardo Vo123 (1980) 117-126
174
constant exchange between figural and conceptual arguments. Single
arguments or small groups of arguments of one modality are always
followed by one or a few arguments of the other modality. Hence our
dialectics metaphor: in the exchange between imagery in the mind and
sketch on paper, we reason by way of relating figures and concepts to one
another until a satisficing 'good fit' is achieved among them.
4 Conclusions
The figure-concept back and forth process is no less systematic and logical
than any other rational dialectic process. The symmetry between figure
and concept compels us to propose the termfigural concept to describe the
prevalent building block of the process of form making in design. If we
accept the notion of at least some domain specificity in cognitive
operations, it is reasonable to expect the mind to apply appropriate
me/:hanisms to tasks in which it must generate form. Imagery, as part of
visual cognition, is one of those mechanisms and it can be amplified by
sketching 34, becoming interactive. Whereas the case study we presented
may be somewhat out of the ordinary, the underlying trends of systematic
visual thinking it exemplifies so cogently are practically universal. Recog-
nition of the powers of visual thinking on the receiving end of perception
has already led to interesting, innovative research that feeds into educa-
tion, communication technology and many other fields. But to stop short
of expanding our understanding of visual cognition would be a costly
mistake. We have everything to gain from a better understanding of a
mode of reasoning that as we have seen, is so crucially instrumental to the
generation of form. No sophisticated tools such as the computer era
provides us with can bypass creative visual thinking. However, if ampli-
fication is possible, as is the case when sketching is practiced, there is no
reason to assume that it cannot be further amplified. Will computational
tools be able to empower us in this respect one day? Possibly, but only
provided we recognize that visual thinking is in no way inferior to other
modes of cognition and is as systematic and rational as linguistic thinking.
5 Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges the receipt of a research fellowship
from the Delft University of Technology, part of which supported the
writing of this article. An early and partial version of this paper was
presented in a public lecture at the SUNY Buffalo School of Architecture
in April 1992.
Design Studies Vol 15 No 2 April 1994