ABSTRACT
For a few minutes, imagine your favorite childhood space. Perhaps it was the dinosaur exhibit of your local museum, the art room of your elementary school, or your own backyard. In your mind’s eye, take a walk through that place, remembering the size and shape of each area and the objects, furniture, and architectural elements it contained. Everything in that environment has been stored in your memory in a “canonical” form [1]. Whether you call it a tree, arbre, or árbol, in your native speaking language, it represents a 3D form in your mind, and that form is part of the universal language of forms we create in a virtual 3D environment. This collection of forms, stored in our memory, also lets us “time travel” to places that may no longer exist. As a designer, you need to allow yourself to be inspired by your encoded memory containing this database of forms. By utilizing your “Visuospatial Sketchpad” (or inner eye), which stores and recalls these forms for you when inspiration strikes, you are accessing a powerful tool for design, as shown in Figure 4.1 [2]. Rediscover this great repository you have been adding to since you were a child and utilize it as often as possible when you are designing, teaching, or just showing your children how to imagine new places.
