The Grid Sketcher: An AutoCad-based tool for conceptual design processes

Sketching with pencil and paper is reminiscent of the varied, rich, and loosely defined formal processes associated with conceptual design. Architects actively engage such creative paradigms in their exploration and development of conceptual design solutions. The Grid Sketcher, as a conceptual sketching tool, presents one possible computer implementation for enhancing and supporting these processes. It effectively demonstrates the facility with which current technology and the computing environment can enhance and simulate sketching intents and expectations; Typically with respect to design, the position taken is that the two are virtually void of any fundamental commonality. A designer\u27s thoughts are intuitive, at times irrational, and rarely follow consistently identifiable patterns. Conversely, computing requires predictability in just these endeavors. The computing environment, as commonly defined, can not reasonably expect to mimic the typically human domain of creative design. In this context, this thesis accentuates the computer\u27s role as a form generator as opposed to a form evaluator. The computer, under the influence of certain contextual parameters can, however, provide the designer with a rich and elegant set of forms that respond through algorithmics to the designer\u27s creative intents. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Attitudes to drawing in Britain, 1918-1964

Numerous artists and theorists in Britain between 1918 and 1964 produced rich bodies of drawing-orientated work, yet these endeavours receive little analysis. In order to account for them as more than isolated anomalies, the nature and importance of drawing during the period needs to be reconsidered – not only within private practices, but also as a concept in the wider cultural field. When engaging with a medium that does not have a fixed identity, and so does not remain stable within a historical narrative, it is not enough to write figures back into history; it is necessary to excavate a history for figures to be written back into. The history of early-twentieth-century Britain must include the full spectrum of significant permutations of the concept of drawing, and this thesis takes steps toward uncovering these permutations and analysing their development in relation to each other. The four chapters, approximately one from each decade, explore key concerns in the evolving significance of drawing. The introduction provides a theoretical foundation for the approach, historical evidence for the period’s importance, and a methodology for treating drawing as a concept. The first chapter explores how Roger Fry and D. S. MacColl’s 1918- 1919 debate in the Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs introduced a theoretical conflict between modernism and drawing. The second chapter examines how reading for design in paintings led to increased awareness of drawings as material traces within other art-objects, notably watercolours. The third chapter explores the importance of the sketch aesthetic during the Second World War for conditioning a form of drawing literacy. The final chapter evaluates notions of objectivity in relation to William Coldstream’s post-war experiments. These episodes combine to foreground the importance of understanding drawing’s difficult relationship with modernism and to demonstrate how it underlies drawing’s recent revival in current practice and theory

The Use of Aesthetics in a Comprehensive Art Curriculum

This study focuses on using aesthetics in the art education curriculum. It also suggests a variety of approaches through which art educators may implement aesthetics in the classroom. Discussions of aesthetics were found in writings of Plato and Aristotle and continue to this day. Philosophers have defined aesthetics as a theory of the beautiful. Educators took this idea a step further in developing curricula and methods of educating that include aesthetics. It has been said in art education literature that aesthetics gives those who practice it a more complete understanding of art. To show the extent of benefits that aesthetics can have in art education, examples of aesthetic experiences are reviewed and discussed. The aesthetics as a philosophy of art has developed into methods used in education. These methods will be discussed. Using the knowledge that aesthetics reveals will demonstrate the importance of art through comparative analysis and historical variation. Aesthetics provide important knowledge about art that can give a classroom teacher motivational dialogue and stimulating ideas in teaching art. Helping students to understand the connection between art and aesthetics allows students to know more about and better understand the importance of each

The Sigiriya Royal Gardens:

Besides the efforts that are of descriptive and celebrative nature, studies related to Sri Lanka’s historical built heritage are largely to view material remains in historical, sociological, socio-historical and semiological perspectives. But there is hardly any serious attempt to view such material remains from a technical-analytical approach to understand the compositional aspects of their designs. The 5th century AC royal complex at Sigiriya is no exception in this regard. The enormous wealth of information and the unearthed material remains during more than hundred years of field-based research by several generations of archaeologists at Sigiriya provide ideal opportunity for such an analysis. The present study is, therefore, to fill the gap in research related to Sri Lanka’s historical built heritage in general and to Sigiriya in particular. Therefore the present research attempts to read Sigiriya as a landscape architectonic design to expose its architectonic composition and design instruments. The study which is approached from a technical-analytical point of view follows a methodological framework that is developed at the Landscape Design Department of the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology. The study reveals that the architectonic design of Sigiriya constitutes multiple design layers and multiple layers of significance with material-spatial-metaphorical-functional coherence, and that it has both general and unique landscape architectonic elements, aspects, characteristics and qualities. The richness of its composition also enables to identify the landscape architectural value of the Sigiriya, which will help re-shape the policies related to conservation and presentation of Sigiriya as a heritage site as well as the protection and management as a green monument. The positive results of the study also underline that the methodology adapted in this research has devised a framework for the study of other examples of historical gardens and landscapes of Sri Lanka, which will eventually provide insight into the typological aspects of the possible Sri Lankan tradition of landscape design