We have and / or will make various references to Arnheims book Visual Thinking. In reading his book this morning, I wanted to share with you this quote from page 76; it heroically describes what we all feel as we design solutions to problems. “Perceptual problem solving has all the aspects of genuine thinking; the […]
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29Oct
2014
LINEAR PERSPECTIVE – THE CRITICS
2014
The development of the perspective should be seen as a natural component of the rational development of the human mind. Certainly the development of the perspective can be understood given our propensity for mathmatization of anything that we dimly perceive as ambivalent. We addressed the linear perspective earlier. Now let’s take a closer look at […]
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27Oct
2014
BRAINLESS MASS ANTS
2014
The Mould Manifesto by the painter Hunderwasser is hugely entertaining and inspirational. In his manifesto, he decries the use of straight lines in architecture. And what painter uses straight lines? Think of almost any painting, and in very few are there straight lines. So Hunderwasser is onto something here. “We live today in a chaos […]
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23Oct
2014
PLAY THE FANTASY GAME
2014
The building is built. The design was done the best that you could have done. Yet I find it interesting to pursue the what if scenarios. What if, for example, there would not have been the historic district regulations that you had to work under? What if there would not have been the required Historic […]
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20Oct
2014
FULL CIRCLE TRANSPARENCY
2014
Thomas French, one of our far flung correspondents, sent an interesting and related note. This regards the PBS series Time Scanners. So that engineers may understand in greater depth the structural integrity of the historic buildings that they are working to stabilize, a new use of laser technology has formed. Laser scans develops a transparent […]
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16Oct
2014
TRANSPARENT BLOCKS – PRODUCT REVIEW
2014
“The maple-wood blocks…are in my fingers to this day.” This is the famous quote by Frank Lloyd Wright touting his kindergarten experiences with the maple block sets that were ubiquitous then. And we have no doubt that playing with objects with our hands is educational. Nothing could be more analogue. A couple of pages ago, […]
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14Oct
2014
VISUAL FACTS
2014
A critical component of the creative conceptual process is when and how we retrieve our associations. As has been discussed earlier, our drawing makes direct deposits in our association database. When we draw, the information becomes part of our thinking and can then be directly leveraged into our designs. Lockard discusses the dichotomy of conception […]
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10Oct
2014
POOR MIES
2014
It is an addition. There is a Mies building attached to it. This is one revelation upon visiting the IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center by Koolhaas. Before we get to the other revelations, let’s explore this Mies connection a bit further. As we know by know, when you visit a building that you are interested […]
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8Oct
2014
TONE AND LINE
2014
Transparent Drawing requires that you draw lines and then put tones between the lines. At least that is what I do. We should give some of our attention to the matter of tones and lines. Resources such as Ching and Lockard will give you ample information on the uses of lines and tones. Of course, […]
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3Oct
2014
RIETVELD SCHRODER HOUSE
2014
Our correspondent Mike reminds us of Gerald Rietveld’s Schroder Residence in Utrecht. Indeed, this building was one that I continued to gaze at thru the iconic book images as a student. I won’t bore you with all of the personal revelations that I gained by making my Transparent Drawing of this building, shown above. I […]
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