Experiential drawings

Designers tend to draw habitually and certainly
 more often than just when designing.
In fact many are excellent artists in their own
right and most are prolific sketchers of the
world around them.
Why should this be? What clues does this give
us about the nature of design knowledge?


We shall see later that this turns out to be a very important clue indeed about both what designers know and how they think.
These experiential drawings are in fact part of the infrastructure of knowledge which every designer must establish. Herman Hertzberger describes this process in his excellent Lessons for Students of Architecture
(1991) .
 The process of drawing is one of the best ways we know to absorb design ideas. The need to pass an idea from eye to mind and then to hand results in a level of understanding not necessarily achieved when simply looking at or even photographing an object or place. Perhaps this explains why so many designers keep sketch books to record things they see.
The English architect John Outram has a particular interest in both history  and symbolism. His architecture is full of references to past architectural periods.
More importantly he has a very elaborately constructed design process which relies upon building a symbolic language into his architecture. Outram, however, is not as precious about all this as might at first seem to be the case.
He realizes that most people looking at his buildings will not be able to read them accurately as texts and this does not bother him (Lawson, 1994): It is sufficient for most people that they know there is a meaning, this enables them to engage with the architect at whatever level they choose.
 However, Outram himself is a considerable scholar and an avid recorder and analyser of architecture.
His sketch books reveal not just a recording of buildings but are covered with analytical scribbles in his particular symbolic language (Fig. 1).

 Clearly although not done inside a particular project these experiential drawings form a vital part of the body of knowledge that Outram draws upon when designing.


We can see evidence of these experiential drawings emerging as part of a specific design process in the drawings done by Santiago Calatrava. The particular sequence here shows his reference back to the human form, a characteristic of Calatrava’s approach, while working on the competition for the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York.
The sequence as shown (Fig. 2) is incomplete with many sketches omitted but we can see the diversion to
redraw the human frame appears to have a strong organizing influence on the outcome of this particular design process.

                                      Fig: 2
As with Outram, Calatrava is a prolific sketcher outside designing. His doctoral thesis was concerned with moving structures and he has developed a lifetime interest in these ideas. In particular he is a keen student of the human form and is fascinated by its ability to reconfigure in order to take on different patterns of loading.


There is some recent growth of concern in design education about the extent to which this sketching activity may be declining.
The development of cheap photography made it easier to record experiential knowledge without the effort of sketching. Modern digital photography makes the recording of images virtually instantaneous and the storing of that material extremely cheap in digital media.


The relatively recent advent of global image searching and retrieval on the Internet with engines such as Google may even reduce the incentive to make your own recording at all.
The now commonplace use of CAD may mean that many young designers do far less physical drawing and may not be developing sketching skills. If all these factors conspire as they appear to be doing to reduce the ability and motivation of designers to sketch and make experiential drawings then future generations of designers may struggle to draw on experiential knowledge in ways, as we shall see later, that appear fundamental to the development of design knowledge.
Only time will tell whether we should be concerned about this or not. Certainly Hertzberger makes a powerful and convincing argument of the need to pass the information through the eye–brain system in order to make the sketch.
Without that mental effort simply seeing an object, building or place may have relatively little future value since recall may in turn be reliant on the media outside the brain.