Shaping Interior Space by Roberto J. Rengel:Ideation

Ideation is one of the most critical and challanging for successful design. Early decisions made during that stage of design become the foundations upon which the rest of the design built. Good solutions to many types of problems require imagination and insight as well as balance and compromise. The concept of fit in design refers to the appropriate correspodence between a set of requirements or needs and the design solution that adressess them. Concepts start with no predetermined form. There is the overall decisions concerning placement, shape, and orientation of places are made during the ideation stage. The first basic ingredient for a meaningful design is a strong and fitting concept. Ideas or strategies that produces a fitting solution is a concept. There can be many concepts in a single project. The main concept helps to tie the entire project together by providing a dominant structure or idea that all othe design ideass adhere to. Organizational concepts are those that guide the arrangement of space. Character concepts are those related to style, image, or theme (less pragmatic and more elusive). The scheme you develop from your cocnept must represent an appropriate response to the project type, its particular programmatic requirements, and the context in which it occurs. During the concept generation stage a first-level order has to be esthablished. Enrichment is initiated during the conceptual stage also. Adding expression in design can be achieved and has to do with character, the materials chosen and the ways they are combined. Articulation refers to the modification of planes or volumes by their skillful subdivision into clearly expressed parts. Inflection means deviation from a given course, as when a straight scheme becomes angular or circular. The stages of concept generation are: Understanding the Project, Identifying Dominant Issues, Conceiving orkable Approaches, Externalizing the Approaches, Evaluating the Approaches, Consolidating Ideas and Choosing DIrection. To truly understand the essence of a project the designer needs to be able to identify its dominant issues. Descriptive scenarios are longer descriptions that paint a picture of an organization, its features and their effects. Anytime that is necessary to address qualitative issues or visualize three-deimensional form it is useful to turn to conceptual sketches instead of diagrams. One can not generate an organizational cocnept without committing to a ciculation system to link your spaces. Sketches work best for visualizing three-dimensional ideas while diagrams are the choice for visualizing organizations and relationships. The parti diagram represents the basic scheme, providing organizational structure to the project by expressing the essence of the solution without getting into detail. The functional diagram corresponds to the functional scheme. A good public diagram, whether a parti or functional diagram, possesses three basic virtues: clarity of content, clarity of intention, and economy means. One aspects of design is that, despite the constraints imposed by the requirenments of the project, there is ampe opportunity for personal interpretation. A quick approach to organizational concept generation consists of these five steps: Establish basic distribution of spaces, Establish main circulation, Articulate general solids, voids and screens, Articulate and/or inflect the scheme, Test the idea.