Sketching and drawing play an important role in the design process. [1] Study drawings allow designers to conduct an internal graphic dialogue about design issues and portray innovative architectural forms that have not yet been built. [2] Different types of drawings serve different purposes, with more abstract study sketches being used for exploration early in the design process and more concrete presentation drawings being used for communication later on. [3] While drawings are useful design tools, some designers are able to generate concepts through mental representations alone, showing that sketching is not always necessary for creativity.

1. Sketching and Drawing
Introduction and departing points

2. Study Drawings
•Herbert, Daniel M:
1993, Architectural
Study Drawings, Van
Nostrand Reinhold,
New York.

3. • Medieval drawings
– Before 1500 AD, mostly geometric layouts derived from and
functioning directly within the construction process or even with
the building itself
• Renaissance drawings
– After 1500 AD codes for design drawing and construction
drawing no longer coincided
– The study drawing was invented
– Study drawings made it possible to set out graphic conjectures
portraying innovative and not yet existing architectural forms

4. •“Designers in the twenty-first
century continue to use study
drawings much as architects did
in the fifteenth”
•“Today’s designers use study
drawings much as Leonardo and

5. “A designer uses study drawings to
conduct an internal graphic dialogue
about the design issues at hand”
• However, designers use drawings mostly by custom
– Without an adequate understanding of their essential role in our
thinking about design
– They continue to use study drawings just as they learned them
– As part of a taken-for-granted background for the foreground
issues of design

6. Public
Private Less
More
abstract
abstract
Types of drawings
– Least abstract to more abstract:
• Perspective, elevation, plan/section, analysis, adjacency,
matrix, graphs
– Private to public:
• Study sketches, presentation and construction drawings

27. • Study Sketches
– Exploratory
– Unpretentious and focused
– Developmental
– Thinking-aids
– Short-lived
– Replaced by the next sketch
– Ultimately superseded by presentation drawings
“The size of a drawing indicates its role in

28. “Study drawings are
idea-sketches: the
designer’s principal
means of thinking.”

32. Dibujo
Goodman, Nelson:
1976, Languages of
Art, an Approach to
a Theory of Symbols,
Hackett, Cambridge.

33. Notational drawings
– Conventional signs - meanings
– Useful to document and communicate ideas
– Example: music scores and construction plans
– Allographic drawings: transferable
– Self-explanatory
– Easy for computational information processing

35. Non-notational drawings
– Intersecting and ambiguous
– Extremely powerful and productive
– Important role to play in human cognition
– Autographic drawings: with an identity
– Open to interpretation
– Very hard for computational information
processing

37. • Early drawing has the function of allowing
communication between the designer and
himself (internal dialogue)
• Late drawing has the function of enabling
communication between the designer and
other people (presentation, documentation,
production)

38. • Sketching is an aid to represent problems into
dimensional, topological and geometric
relationships
• However the benefit of drawing is different for
different subjects, partly dependent on their
drawing skills
• The use of sketching does not guarantee a more
creative result
• Some people are able to generate and manipulate
new concepts solely through mental activity
• Henri Christiaans

39. • “The Role of Sketching and Imagery in
Conceptual Designing”
• This thesis indicates that constructing
mental representations can be a strong
tool for designing
• The use of mental representations can
satisfy some important purposes that
sketching serves
• Zafer Bilda