Proximate Architecture: Basis for a Pedagogy of Diagram

Diagrams used in design processes exclusively serve the resultant object of the work, and we often understand diagrams in terms of how they might serve the discipline within which they are intended to function. In this sense, diagrams are a means to an objective that is distant from, and external to, the designer. However, diagramming intended for reinforcing cognitive capacities required for abstract thinking, comprehension of increasingly complex conditions surrounding a problem, and strategic planning reorients the intention back towards the student-architect. At the same time, this focus on process within the architect suggests a stratum of architectural definition that is innately internal, manifested within the conceptual, the virtual, and through the imagination. What occurs if we reverse our focus from the diagram’s service to architecture to the diagram’s service to the architect? How does the diagrammatic process serve the architect? How does diagramming develop understanding of architecture by shaping cognitive utility towards its concepts? How can we fold this into pedagogy and knowledge production to establish methods towards expansion of architectural cognition?

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.109.59

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ISBN
978-1-944214-37-1