ABSTRACT
In the age of design in “virtual-space”, I exploit the benefits of sketching by hand and on paper to understand the relationship between architecture and engineering at the critical early stages of education. Referencing the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci [1452–1519], I investigate Leonardo’s “interlocked acts of drawing and thinking” and the benefits of sketching in the “design process” as a “conceptual tool”. I explore how the act of sketching cultivates a mixture of intuitive and analytical thinking allowing any mind, engaged in the activity of designing, to make associative leaps from one level of thinking to another, defined by Tom F. Peters as “matrix-like thinking.” I also look at how publications by Eduardo Torroja and Mario Salvadori reveal the underlying nature of structural concepts through drawing. I test this in the practice of sketching in the “Gravity+Reaction Notebook,” or a “way of thinking” about structures at SAUL, School of Architecture and the School of Civil Engineering, University of Limerick.
