The dialectics of sketching

Abstract: The generation of architectural form is by definition a creative activity. As a rule, architects engage in intensive, fast, freehand sketching when they first tackle a design task. This study investigated the process of sketching and revealed that by sketching, the designer does not represent images held in the mind, as is often the case in lay sketching, but creates visual displays which help induce images of the entity that is being designed. Sketching partakes in design reasoning and it does so through a special kind of visual imagery. A pattern of pictorial reasoning is revealed which displays regular shifts between two modalities of arguments, pertaining to both figural and nonfigural aspects of candidate forms at the time they are being generated, as part of the design search. The dialectics of sketching is the oscillation of arguments which brings about gradual transformation of images, ending when the designer judges that sufficient coherence has been achieved.