ABSTRACT
Perceptiveness is not merely a cognitive trait, but also the attitude and skill that come from an understanding that definitions of things might change. Throughout training in design, biases in methods, techniques, and materials will constantly be altered as individuals master them in their own ways, discovering new things to do with them along the way. Basic design education, which is practiced today as an introductory and formative course in architectural education, is based on starting from a clean slate, free of professional terminology and focusing on fundamental and abstract terms. The basic design curricula in many schools today try to encourage students to see creativity from a pragmatist viewpoint. Two features of the basic design studio are key in realizing these explorations as similarly seen in the methods of Ross and Dow. First, the content matter is abstract forms and abstract problems. Second, basic design builds upon the ideas of repetition, comparison, and variance.
