Questioning design tools in the early stage of architectural design process: Pen and paper vs. digital sketching
Tez Türü: Doktora
Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Türkiye
Tez Danışmanı: Aslı Sungur; Çiğdem Polatoğlu
Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2018
Tezin Dili: İngilizce
Özet:
Architectural design has a special position in architecture education. It is the main and
most effective study area to develop architecture student‘s design skill and knowledge.
In the architectural design, designer focuses more on the conceptual stage of design.
This stage is different from other phases of design process and provides fields that
designer manipulates the design problem and generates and explores new ideas. Early
stage of design generally begins with sketches and diagrams (referred to as traditional
media) to explore ideas and solutions. The freehand sketch plays important role in
design process by facilitating problem solving, generating ideas and externalizing them.
The ambiguity and vagueness of conventional freehand sketching can be a source of
creativity.
Nowadays, with the advances in digital technology, there are attempts to integrate
digital tools with the early phases of design in order to make a digital design media in
the architectural education. Recent developments in CAAD software shows a shift in
focus toward conceptual design interface; but these tools have not developed and still
fail to offer an appropriate design environment for sketching. Therefore, the application
of digital tools has created debates among design instructors and researchers; the main
point of these discussions is that computer software may impede the creative behaviors
and this can lead to poor and non-creative design by students. So can be concluded that,
architectural education in application of digital tools in the early design stages are
facing problems and challenges especially regarding creativity.
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This study focuses on conceptual design process and aims: firstly, to find out the
relationship between conventional sketching and creativity, the current status of digital
sketching and interface and whether it can replace traditional sketching in educational
context. In experimental study, the digital based sketching is compared and evaluated
with pen and paper sketching from creativity point of view via protocol analysis method
and linkography, and whether it can enhance the creativity of students.
The findings emphasis on the strong relationship between creativity and conventional
sketching method and show that there are attempts to create design interface to simulate
pen and paper sketching features at digital medium for support creative design. As a
conclusion, the findings of the empirical study also stressed out that designers in pen
and paper sketching had richer design process and more opportunities for idea
generation versus the digital sessions, and consequently they had more creative and
productive design process. However, digital sketching depending on its nature can
enable designers to make interconnectivity of ideas and create the number of different
ideas, if they have sufficient experience and skills in digital sketching software.
Key words: Conceptual Design, Freehand Sketching, Digital Sketching, Creativity,
Linkography, Protocol Analysis.