STRUCTURAL ESSENCE

Productive thinking. This is what we all want to do. We want to be as productive as we can when we problem solve.  For the greatest productivity, we need to be thinking about the structural essence of our solutions. Structural essence involves focusing on generative and central attributes, rather than the peripheral attributes.

So are we saying that we need to think like structural engineers? No. The use of the word structural is not meant to imply that you need to solve for the load capacity of the roof.  When you solve for the structural essence, you manipulate the interior and exterior volumes and forms, the rhythm and patterns of the solution, the proportion, etc. This is problem solving with the greatest purity.

Productive thinking requires that the artist, scientist, or any other problem solver to “aim at the nature and principals of things, at the forces underlying their appearance and behavior.“ Visual Thinking, p 176.  By contrast, what might non-productive thinking look like? A manipulation of style, for one. We have very stubborn human tendencies to let our design thinking be interfered with as we contemplate, for example, design history. Letting into your mind stylistic attributes derails your productive thinking.

And the greatest threat to our thinking is when we give greater importance to style, rather than the structural essence. In our image rich world, it can become very difficult to turn off the historical spigot.

We think on paper. The more representationally we draw, the more difficult it is to turn off the historical spigot. The more transparently we draw, the more we are able to solve for the structural essence.