Visualization and Creativity: Developing Spatial Representation Skills in Interior Design Education

Abstract

Communication is the exchange of information between people. The purpose of this exchange is to meet the human needs such as understanding, learning, explaining or informing. Communication efficiency can be increased through depending on the nature of the communication means, as much as the quality of the information, opinion or behaviour in general terms "the message". People have been developed many methods to communicate with each other throughout the ages. They have used objects and environments as means to firstly reveal different aspects of the experiences of the person or group, to enlighten the people, to glorify and to sell these experiences. Also today a two or three dimensional reality, from object to space has the potential to become a communication means. A person feels the whole with his body while walking within the space and becoming aware of himself, environment, nature and then the relationships between them. A spatial designer should be looking for creating this experience environment and transmitting the process, also the creation which is emerged to the reader effectively with the enhanced graphic forms of expression. The application named "Space of Experiment, Experiment of Space" has been arranged in this context with its design process and final product within the scope of Introduction to Spatial Design studio course in Interior Design Department. In here the concepts such as human, space, environment, nature, inside and outside, place, proportion-scale, structure, and their relationships are featured values. Primary purposes for the students are to understand, to perceive these values and to realize their equivalents with real life in their designs and to exhibit them through creative expressions via both spatial and graphical elements. Sketches, technical drawings, models, photographs, personal texts and statements which are made by the students under the light of main concept during the design process have been evaluated as the means. So in this study, some questions such as: how these diversifying means can be converted to different expression techniques on the pre-determined layout, how they can be gathered and arranged together as the parts of spatial experiences and how they can be carried to the final product, and then finally the answers of these questions will be shared through the application examples.