Architectural Concept Design – learning architecture and ‘visualization’

 Introduction to visualization

Few things in this world cannot be learnt with real experiments. One is learning to die. Another is Architecture. Imagine at a city centre constructing a tower of fifty floors with a floor area of thousands of squire feet, with car parks, services, gardens and then say this tower construction experiment is a failure and it has to be dismantled! Architecture cannot be learnt that way, but on the contrary, being an act of design, it deserves real experiment.

Design without experiment shall not fetter our freedom of creation into the mere shaping up of the common model to survive the situation. Each tower erected, being unique to its location, function and character, expected to be born out of it.

Each new design deserves testing. To be confident, the designers need to have seen and experience the building in reality – or as if in the reality. The art with which, we experience the buildings before they come to the reality – the art with which we live the unborn places – is called the Visualization of Architecture. Visualization in Architecture is to see, experience, go in and live the building before it becomes a reality.

 

Visualization as a learning tool for Concept Design

Visualization is the most powerful and effective learning tool in the hands of the Architecture students. If a student can be given the opportunity to build his designs, walk in and understand the spaces he has created, then he would have learnt how enchanting if the volume was slightly bigger, and how effective if the textures were rougher. Then he would have understood whether the kind of mindset he has imagined has been manifested in the building as expected. The self-judgement gives first hand knowledge. Nevertheless, students being students cannot be given this opportunity.

Architectural experiment has to be totally based on visualization. Ability to visualise ones own design is the key stone of learning through his experiments. Each design done at the university is an experiment of Architecture. To learn from that experiment, the design has to be lived in. Therefore, the capability of experiencing the places of his designs, at least virtually, is important.

The confidence on what one has designed comes through visualization. That you know what the place you have created provides the sheer determination to continue on ones own feet. The common mistake among students is to let the design be carried away by the bias opinions of different tutors and jurors. The simple fact that the student is not capable of visualising his design makes him not know what his design is and therefore makes him hang in the balance and be totally shaken by the opinions of others.

Even this way one may be come out of successful designs, but at the end of the day what is learnt is only some others opinion. The experimental value of the design is totally wasted.

 

What is visualization

Visualization needs to be distinguished from dreaming and story telling – things commonly done by the students of Architecture. Students of Architecture of the university are capable of presenting the schemes better than the professionals do the world over. Nevertheless, it is a problem whether all of them visualise the designs. Once a lecturer correctly pointed out to a student that the student can draw is a great disadvantage in his design. What ever he draws looks elegant and appears to be marvellous that they deceive the student himself. Had he not capable of drawing, he would have leaded to think.

In another occasion it was pointed out that if we make students draw with their legs instead of hands, they would probably come out with better Architecture. All this mean is that drawings sometimes leads to prevent visualization, than becoming a visualization aid as it ought to be.

Creating striking presentation drawings have nothing to do with visualization. Visualization refers to experiencing the building in almost reality. It is to see the piece of Architecture with all its texture, lighting and three-dimensional volumes. Visualization is something that leads to recapture the story and the dreams made – leads to the identification whether it is really happening.

If all that is done by architects were dreaming, then there would have not been a need of visualization. What architects do is to make the dream happen. Architects concretise the imagination into walls, openings, patterns and textures. It is actually easy to go in front of the audience and tell a story of ones design in terms of what you see when you arrive, how daylight draw shadow patterns inside and how you feel when you enter into the main space and so forth, but it is not visualization. Visualization deals more with the reality of the space than the story of it. Your story telling is no guarantee that you make the audience visualise the design.

Visualization is to project what the space really is than how you picture it. It is an unbiased display of the space with no emotions attached. The reality of the place created is pictured – but pictured so clearly and strongly that one can trace how he would feel and experience it. To make somebody visualise a piece of Architecture is difficult but the scope of this document is towards visualising your design by your self for the benefit of your own learning.

 

How do we visualise

Visualization is a difficult art, but the most effective tool of visualization is ones imagination. One can imagine correctly the scale, the proportions, colours, textures, how light fall in and every other little thing comprehensively and as a synthetic whole, is capable of visualising. This ability is hard to be achieved and requires a sound concentration. Many students, even at the M.Sc. level, even after working for months, are seen to be failing to realise the scale of ones own project.

Therefore, visualization needs to be supported. One tool that supports visualization is perspective drawings. However, perspectives can be named as the weakest. The possibility that you miss the proportions and the scale is greater. On the other hand, it is very difficult to project textures, lighting etc. However, the inherent draw back to perspectives is that they always stand to be a projection of your dream than the reality of the space designed.

In that regard, model making does contain many salient advantages. Models are three-dimensional and they do not restrict your vision to any particular point. Its scales and proportions can be perfected. The material and textures can be made almost similar. However, the greatest disadvantage of models is that it is impossible to go into the building. With them, one cannot experience spaces and volumes and therefore they do not promote the visualization of the spatial art.

The most effective and versatile visualization tool so far is computer simulation. The applications are developed today, to a level that even the daylight conditions can be exactly simulated. The ability of using any kind of textures, materials and forms and the ability to go into every little corner of the building are some of the key advantages. Ability to build anything to exact scales and the endless opportunity to moderate, virtually, any thing – the materials, textures, forms, lights- for any number of times have make it a sophisticated tool.

Whatever the tools a student selects, he has to know how to use it for visualization. Whatever the tool selected, it requires practice and capability.

 

Learn with Visualization

To grasp the essence of a design experiment, one should learn to visualise the project. Visualization generates first hand experience – the experience one could achieve after practicing for number of years. In comparison with a person who have visualised his designs for six years at the university, those who learn by practice for twenty years are held far behind. Whatever the design project you do, do not leave it without living in it. Experience the reality, what is the place you have created and know what it is rather than what your dreams were.

 




By: ishantha gunadasa