W O R K I N G D R A F T
latest update:
06/19/2009 01:51 PM
c o n c e p t u a l f r a m e w o r k s
for creativity, critical thinking and analysis, communication,
project programming and design, concept expression
...
L. A. Clement, Jr., JD, ASLA
© Lorn Clement College of Architecture, Planning and Design Kansas State University 2008
This page is intended to be an outline of useful conceptual frameworks (many have been/will be introduced in class). They might structure investigations, discussions or presentations of ideas. I hope that design students will be able to apply them with increasing ability, skill and insight as progress is made in the design studio sequence. I recommend reading the entirety of the texts referenced below.
Index
Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A course in enhancing creativity and artistic confidence:
Perceptual skills (a way of seeing) for a cognitive shift:
Donis A. Dondis, A Primer of Visual Literacy. This little book is a very good introduction to the topic.
Kaplans, Rachel and Stephen, and Robert Ryan (1998, Island Press) With People in Mind; Design and management of everyday nature ... Information processing: understanding and exploration in terms of:
Levitin, Daniel J. 2006. This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. Penguin Group. There are strong relationships not only among landscape design, writing and the visual arts, but also music...
Chip and Dan Heath discuss six principles of effective communication in their new book Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die:
Mickey Connolly, in his The Communication Catalyst, describes four levels of conversation:
Graphic Expression now has its own webpage. This page identifies key concepts in the books I have used in studio.
Critical Thinking | A basis for life-long
learning
Critical Thinking now has its own webpage. This page presents ideas that are intended to improve our discussion of thinking, recognizing that there are different levels of thought, or degrees/kinds of knowledge. We should be able to talk about "knowing" intelligently.
His is an amazing and evolving mind. Psychologist Howard Gardner has identified several distinct types of intelligence, and stirred significant debate in the worlds of education and cognitive development:
- 1. Linguistic (Verbal, Language)
- 2. Logical-Mathematical
- 3. Bodily-Kinesthetic
- 4. Spatial (Visual)
- 5. Musical
... see: http://www.howardgardner.com/books/books.html
Design Vocabulary and Theory now has its own webpage. This page identifies the key concepts and vocabulary of books I have used in studio; and others I have read and would recommend to aspiring designers.
This list is from Design Purpose, chapter seven in Michael D. Murphy (2005) Landscape Architecture Theory: An evolving body of thought, Waveland Press … headings from pp. 161 – 165. For each of the following requirements, Murphy poses a series of questions, by which design success may be considered or measured.
In the following sections of that chapter Murphy offers related lists of key considerations / design criteria for:
Quality of Life, and
Quality of Environment.
Koberg and Bagnall, The Universal Traveler: A soft systems guide to creativity, problem-solving and the process of reaching goals ...
... various models; perhaps ordering these with the spiral metaphor is "best":
CRSS; Problem Seeking: An architectural programming primer
Matrix: rows of form, function, economy and time intersect with columns headed by 1) goals, 2) facts, 3) concepts, 4) needs, and 5) problem:
goals facts concepts needs problem form function economy time
Halprin, RSVP Cycles:
Potteiger and Purinton, Landscape Narratives: Design practices for telling stories
Consider these narrative tropes in the realms of Story, Intertext and Discourse (c/f expanded by Lorn Clement):
Treib, "Must Landscapes Mean?: Approaches to significance in
recent landscape architecture,"
Landscape Journal, v. 14, no. 1 (Spring 1995):
Alexander, et al., Pattern Language: Towns, buildings, construction
You have to go there for this one...
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With a nod to Larry Cindrich:
See also a few notes on the subject, made during a Richard Hansen visit.
Ching, Francis D.K., in Design Drawing addresses drawing in three sections: 1) Drawing from Observation; 2) Drawing Systems; and 3) Drawing from the Imagination. In the final section there is Chapter 9, entitled Speculative Drawing. Its components are keys to creative process and are:
Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in...
Consider these ideas for resolving disputes with a long-term view (see pp. 15 - 94):
The reportorial conceptual framework is perhaps the most useful and basic conceptual framework students have used to date, even without thinking about it as a conceptual framework. The reportorial questions:
who,
what,
when,
where,
how, and
why
... organize thought about a complex subject, whether it be in a semester report or an expository essay. Design students in our program have presented the ideas and work of an important landscape architect through the format known as an “analytique,” answering these questions in a strong graphic composition and accompanying written text.
The analytique presents information collected for analyzing the designer's idiom and influences, and the products of his/her professional efforts. The products are shown graphically using strong contrast and clarity of drawing to place emphasis on important visual characteristics; to identify the key elements of a composition or project; and to indicate principles of design employed by the designer to create his/her work. Drawing techniques are used to suggest layers and spatial depth. Analytiques operate by focusing attention on key parts or selected attributes of the subject; such as repetition of a key shape; spatial organization evident in the plan; elevation changes and scale relationships evident in sections; or an important symbol or iconographic element in the work.
Typically students select designers because they find the work to be intriguing for some reason. The reasons include finding the work beautiful, useful, technically interesting, ecologically-based or socially relevant. All the reportorial questions address key aspects of the subject, and when presented logically create an integrated body of knowledge on the subject. Framing elements, layering, strong edge contrast and gradations of value in the graphics, and other conventions of making the analytique, arouse the visual sense and engage the viewer.
A well-executed analytique will be effective as a means of communication when it functions like a good metaphor: it provides intellectual illumination while simultaneously stirring the emotions.
Conceptual Frameworks for Sustainable Thinking now has its own web page. This webpage identifies key ideas and frameworks for thinking in "sustainable" ways, and perhaps leads to choices that would be considered good stewardship of land.
Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat; A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York. 2005) is a must-read for any future practitioner of our profession. This book follows and expands on the themes introduced in The Lexus and the Olive Tree; Understanding Globalization (1999).
Ten Forces that Flattened the World (Chapter Two)
The Triple Convergence, discussed in Chapter Three, occurred somewhere around 2000
The triple convergence "is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty-first century." (p. 182) This book ends with a chapter addressing the imperative of positive thinking, adhering to traditional American values, creativity and imagination.
The Cognitive Age Paradigm
David Brooks, who also writes for the New York Times, has recently suggested that, "It's time to move beyond the globalization paradigm" in a recent editorial found in the Manhattan Mercury (May 5, 2008). In that op-ed piece he notes that "the globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations." He discusses what is really going on, without denying the importance of globalization as a concept, but identifies a new way of understanding global movement of goods, people and capital across borders ... the idea he calls 'the cognitive age paradigm' which "emphasizes psychology, culture, and pedagogy -- the specific processes that foster learning." He writes that there is a skills revolution going on, and that "we're moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information." While Thomas Friedman points out that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant, Brooks points out that it is the last few inches of the information's journey that is most important -- "the space between a person's eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain." He asks,
Brooks and Friedman are both highly respected commentators on world events, economics and geopolitics. They come from different parts of the political spectrum (the former more conservative than the latter), but their observations and analysis lead them in the same direction. Our secure and prosperous future lies in addressing the challenges of developing human capital -- intelligence, creativity, and motivation... sounds like critical thinking, doesn't it?
Thomas Friedman's latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded is also highly recommended.
Right-Brainers will Rule
Daniel Pink's 2005 A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future addresses key skills for the 21st C. The second part addresses what he calls Six 'Senses':
... all of these are themes that we encourage and actively develop all the time in our studios, seminars, and the College.
The first part of A Whole New Mind concerns the arrival of the
Conceptual Age ... themes of Right-brain rising; Abundance, Asia, and Automation
(globalization); and High Concept - High Touch. These skills and
knowledge, and attitudes, will enable individuals and the US to continue to lead
... they involve well developed abilities in the use of perception, knowledge
and imagination.
Life
Ken Wilbur: The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating science and religion. There is a very useful three-dimensional matrix in this text:
How does the space nourish the (individual / collective X interior / exterior):
Life's big questions:
... which brings us back to the Vitruvian triad and Plato.
See the final page of Architecture and Landscape: the Design Experiment of the Great European Gardens and Landscapes by Clemens Steenbergen and Wouter Reh (Birkhäuser, Berlin, 2003) for summary thoughts in terms of Utilitas, Firmitas, and Venustas. Here, too, we find a reference to the genius loci ...
Regarding success in life and professional work, here is some very good advice from Warren Buffet's mother:
Last thoughts are from Bill Moyers, Fooling with Words; A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft at page 100 where he is interviewing Jane Hirshfield and discussing the realm of language, thought and expression ... she says that Zen pretty much comes down to three things --
[Thank you, Richard Hansen.]
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The inscription on the southern frieze at the Nelson Atkins Museum of
Art in Kansas City, Missouri reads:
"It is by the Real that we Survive; it is by the
Ideal that we Live."
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