VISUALIZATION

The Visualization sequence curriculum supports primarily the process of translating ideas into visual and representational formats that foster the transition from the mind-hand to the computer and vice-versa and to develop a critical approach to this generative process. It is designed to accompany and support the design studio sequence. It provides tools to enhance our awareness of the coordination of eye, mind, and hand, both to better understand how we see and to better document our ideas. The three visualization courses seek to position themselves within an academic and professional environment of constantly changing design tools, representational methods, and technologies. Through the careful introduction of appropriate tools and methodologies, these courses are meant to equip students with a digital and analog framework that supports fluidity in the process and reinforcement of the benefits and value of each through an exchange and overlap.

Visualization I is the introductory representation course for Interior Design and Architecture Majors. It is the first in a series of courses that impart the concepts and skills of visual communication necessary to explore and practice these two related fields. The course aims at exposing the students to the understanding of architecture as a discipline and practice through a variety of inputs to support the students’ critical process of understanding architecture and its expanded field. Students learn how we can transfer ‘what we see’ and ‘what we think’ into different visualization formats, and more importantly, how we can record our thoughts and inform design processes through iterative explorations. The course serves as an introduction to computer-aided design and other applications for visual communication and representation.

Visualization II intends to develop generative modeling abilities and explore strategies to imagine spatial, tectonic, and stereotomic conditions digitally. Investigations are nurtured by issues and tasks related to the application and use of more advanced computational tools and information technologies to foster experimentation, iterative processes and generative design thinking. Much like skills introduced in Visualization I, the exercises offer not only new tools for visual communication and representation but also new methodologies for design and abstraction. The course provides new tools to enhance further the ability to explore and improve visual communicati¬¬on skills, as well as their generative approach to design.

Visualization III provides skills for more advanced computational tools and digital fabrication techniques and tectonics. More advanced platforms of investigation of computational technologies in design are offered to students as a format to get them exposed to the interchangeability between platforms and modes of operation. Students are exposed to the feedback loop between design and making, generative protocols, and coding. A discussion of the way in which emerging technologies are affecting contemporary practice and process act as a theoretical underpinning to all exercises.

Visualization I and Visualization II are designed to support the curriculum, methodologies, and projects developed in AAID 101- Design Fundamentals 1 and AAID 102Design Fundamentals 2, by exposing students to means of communicating and representing their studio work.