UC Berkeley

This dissertation proposes a concept of immersion as an integral aspect of a general theory of the (early phase) architectural design act in the age of computing. Computing has influenced design in two major ways – as a metaphor shaping contemporary understanding of the design process, and as a machine used in the practice. The history of the relationship between these two modes of influence is traced to locate immersion in a model of the architectural design process. Early design is explored in this study by a comparative study of design across variously technologically mediated sketching environments. This process is considered as an individual process. Collaborative design is set aside.

Computing has influenced design in two ways – as a metaphor for the process and as a machine used in the process. These two types of influences could also be understood to define two distinct tracks along which research in computer aided design has been developed. As a machine, computing has been studied in the fields like evaluation simulations in various domains such as acoustics, energy consumption, structural analysis, emergency evacuations, generative models, and representational models. Research in the broad field of design and computing can also be understood to have developed along these two tracks. Sketching has emerged as the predominant mode of interest to scholars who study design as a cognitive activity.

Recent technological developments in the field of computational support to augment sketching, which is an important representational mode in early design, enable designers to sketch immersively ‘at the site’. The significance of this technological advancement, which makes the site available to the designer/architect at human scale, to architectural representation, especially in the early design process, remains poorly understood. This new capacity for immersive sketching is used as a starting point for developing the concept of immersion in architectural design. The Hybrid Ideation Space (HIS), an immersive sketching environment developed in the Industrial Design faculty at the University of Montreal by Prof. Tomas Dorta and his colleagues is used.

Hitherto, much of the scholarship has been focused on the study of design (as a process) and sketching (as a practice). Immersion has been understood as a property of the technology used during designing. Presence, a related but distinct idea has been understood as a property of the user (or in this case, designer). An examination of the technological context of the HIS and the theoretical context of scholarship of design as a process and as a mediated practice, it is argued that immersion is not strictly a geometrical or spatial idea, or a property of the technology, but exists at the intersection of a three-way relationship between designer, design representation and design context.

A concept of immersion as an aspect of designing is developed in this thesis through a combination of theoretical inquiry and empirical, exploratory comparative case studies involving a conceptual design problem made available to participants in three different mediated design environments – sketching at the site, sketching in the HIS, and sketching based on a set of photographs of the site. This work sets the stage for narrower, quantitative experimental work which could further refine and detail the proposed concept of immersion, enable cross-media analysis of designing and contribute to the understanding of design as a systematic, purposeful activity.