FORM GENERATION

As designers, one of the basic points is to derive a form that is unique to your problem and somewhat different that what has come before. The derivation of a new form is in our blood. It is one of the fruits of the game that we play.

Transparent Drawing is a powerful tool to use for design synthesis. Concepts can be formed by starting with a shape or form that you are interested in. This starting point can be very removed from either where you think you want to end up or where you actually end up.

You continue to draw and think three dimensionally as you modify and adapt your solution to your problem. As you develop a concept, the transparency allows you ease and freedom of movement. This allows for a greater chance to create something new and different.

To give you an example of how Transparent Drawing helps you work in this direction, let’s consider the example of 11th century chinese boats. During a trip thru the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, there was an exhibit on early Chinese culture. There was the great assembly of urns, tapestries, and ivory. I found myself being pulled toward the models and images of small boats. So while there, I took my usual snapshots with my phone of these boats on tapestries.

The next morning, when I was wondering what I would draw, I asked myself the question, how could these very cool and interesting boats generate an architecture? That is to say, how could I start with the general form of these craft and then generate some sort of enclosure?

Later pages will discuss the specific methodology of how you might go about making this associative manipulation. For now though, my personal response was to first rotate one of these boats 90 degrees so that it was laying on its side. Then I made cuts into the form so as to generate planes. This plane generation was unpredictable given the curveilinear boat form and a flat plane. At no time did I think or draw opaquely. As I drew, I was consciously trying to shape this into some form of enclosure that might be a building. Yet I was not paying specific attention to exactly what form this might turn out to be. I was simply working to develop the enclosure.

Possibly, this exercise achieves a mildly new category of concept formation. Certainly the sketch is spatial / temporal. It is a first step. And certainly to move from this generality to something more specific, many more sketches would need to be accomplished.

If you start thinking in a category that is degrees removed from where you want to end up, this is where concept formulation is the most potent and powerful. And if you can start at a far removed place, and then end up basically where you intended, your solution will be truly powerful and unique.

My drawing suggests enclosure. Further development could certainly turn this into a complete form and solves a specific problem. Let’s say you actually use your drawing as a starting point. If you do, then you will have established a fresh genesis. You will be off on your own trajectory.