1 Analysis
Diagramming Diagramming is the process of abstracting and simplifying an idea so that it can be easily understood. It is the recording of the physical and spatial characteristics that identify the unique and recognizable characteristics of a building, site, or program. It is the process by which familiarity with a specific set of programmatic and contextual circumstances can be achieved. Much like a child’s sketch, a diagram is not concerned with developing nuance but, instead, with clarity: it is a reduction—a boiling down—of an idea. The diagram cannot only analyze the physical, it can also reveal the ephemeral, the historical, the infrastructural. Diagrams allow one to gain an understanding of a particular project by revisiting it again and again through a series of distinct lenses. They also facilitate an understanding of how several seemingly unrelated works might in fact be brought together as an inventory of thematically related conditions. And, finally, diagramming can also facilitate the quick exploration of alternate solutions to a problem in its initial stages of development. The diagram not only maps the identity of a given project, but points the way to the conception of a new project. And it is in these reductive, abstract states that diagrams often resemble more universal conditions. INTERPRETATION It is the simplicity of the analytical diagram that allows for its subsequent interpretation and transformation when introduced to a new set of parameters.
Design Center that students were asked to design in a 2006 freshman design studio at Cornell University.
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A series of analytical models demonstrates alternate formal and material strategies for a Danish
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Intermediary Device The synthesis of an analysis often leads to the production of an intermediary device, an artifact that is subsequently open to multiple interpretations. This device is, in effect, a ‘prearchitectural’ moment. It can take the form of a drawing or model, and it is a suggestive and interpretable representation that has the ability to shift in both scale and