ABSTRACT
In the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, long considered the anathema of contemporary design thinking, students began design by doing rather than thinking alone. Leaving aside the question of what "think properly" might mean, it was taken as a precondition that students were, almost without exception, completely unprepared to engage design thinking in acceptably workable ways. However, expecting students to perfect only their thinking before they are urged or required to act can lead to a type of paralysis in the belief that one can truly "get it right" in one's mind before making graphic or modeled suggestions for space. Beginning design students, especially, might be resistant to the expectation that they make drawings before "knowing" what the content of the drawings could be. In the academic architectural design studio, the instructor sets the agenda in a variety of ways. He or she most often provides the project program(s), the site(s), and the schedule.
