Shape
" In Shape, George Stiny argues that seeing shapes--with all their changeability and ambiguity--is an inexhaustible source of creative ideas. Understanding shapes, he says, is a useful way to understand what is possible in design. Shapes are devices for visual expression just as symbols are devices for verbal expression. Stiny develops a unified scheme that includes both visual expression with shapes and verbal expression with signs. The relationships--and equivalencies--between the two kinds of expressive devices make design comparable to other professional practices that rely more on verbal than visual expression. Design uses shapes while business, engineering, law, mathematics, and philosophy turn mainly to symbols, but the difference, says Stiny, isn't categorical. Designing is a way of thinking. Designing, Stiny argues, is calculating with shapes, calculating without equations and numbers but still according to rules. Stiny shows that the mechanical process of calculation is actually a creative process when you calculate with shapes--when you can reason with your eyes, when you learn to see instead of count. The book takes the idea of design as calculation from mere heuristic or metaphor to a rigorous relationship in which design and calculation each inform and enhance the other.
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- If you're interested in L-systems you may also enjoy reading about Shape Grammars. Sort of an evolutionary dead-end in terms of system design, but intriguing. As far as I can tell they were basically superceded by other types of programmatic or parametric design systems. Some references:
- http://web.mit.edu/~haldane/www/icerays/
- https://vincentmai.com/Shape-Grammar
- https://wiki.ece.cmu.edu/ddl/index.php/Shape_grammar
- "Shape: Talking About Seeing And Doing" by George Stiny
- https://www.slideshare.net/schase56/dcc-2010-grammars-worksh...
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ai-edam/article/abs/...
- I had a look at George Stiny's "Shape: Talking about Seeing and Doing" book (MIT Press, 2006) which is freely available on the web [1]. The introduction is very waffly ... his analysis of shape strikes me as what Euclid('s predecessors) did a long time ago in figuring out what geometry should talk about. Combining primitive images/shapes algebraically was explored by Henderson in the early 1980s [2] and many others; SICP too IIRC.
Has anyone used this stuff (shape grammars) in anger? Any pointers to a system that works on current platforms that is worth playing with?
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140105105101/http://shapetalki...
- Thanks for sharing, I never heard about this before! The Wikipedia article on shape grammar has a link to an old website[1] from a workshop at MIT that links to many more interesting resources, including the “Shape” book by George Stiny you mentioned as a free download (not sure if the author agreed to this, so I’ll just use it as a reading sample and buy the book if I like it), course material, presentations, etc.
I also found a more recent book[2] by George Stiny called “Shapes of Imagination: Calculating in Coleridge's Magical Realm” that is also about shape grammars and is actually open access. Coming from a design background, I am sure to take a closer look at some of this stuff.
- [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190405160829/http://shapegramm...
- [2] https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5489/Shapes-of-Ima...
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