ABSTRACT
Through history, architects have manipulated visual imagery to assist the design process. Such imagery has assumed the form of construction documents, design drawings, analysis and details, various forms of sketches, and images conceived in the mind's eye. The philosopher Richard Wollheim writes that representational seeing involves ‘seeing as’ (1971). It requires foresight and imagination to comprehend a two-dimensional visual image as a three-dimensional inhabitable structure. Since it is economically unfeasible to test a construction full scale, architects depend on substitute media to assist in their visual thinking. Humans are seldom able to imagine a fully formed impression of a complex configuration, such as a building, entirely in the mind. Through visual artifacts, architects can transform, manipulate, and develop architectural concepts in anticipation of future construction. It may, in fact, be through this alteration that architectural ideas find form.
