Abstract:

In this paper we want to make clear that new technologies offer new possibilities to learn to use perspective in design, especially in the interaction between analogue and digital techniques.
Since the invention of perspective by Brunelleschi (1377-1446), it has become the core of representation for architecture and other design disciplines. So teaching perspective is part of all basic design courses in architecture.
In teaching perspective the very start is learning to see, learning to observe and visually research the daily environment. Before you can learn how to use perspective in design, you first have to learn to see, to observe the daily environment as object of planning and design. Key issue in the use of perspective in design is that the rules of perspective are not terribly complicated but in the use and application in design it is getting more complicated. The didactic solution for this is to put emphasis on learning by doing.
In the first part, we describe three research projects by Schuivens and others on the subject of teaching perspective in the context of new technologies that the digital era brought us. At Delft this research has been done in the transition of the classical 'Delft Method' as a basis for teaching perspective to the contemporary digital era.
In the second part we make clear how these principles have been applied in teaching visualisation at the Master's level for urban designers and landscape architects. We put great emphasis on various interactions between hand drawing and digital techniques like photography, video. We see drawing as a means of 'acquiring knowledge'.
Note that this approach is not an old fashioned approach that 'translates' everything analogue to digital but a hybrid approach where both have input and where the interaction between the two offers unsurpassed potential for new teaching approaches.
One of the conclusions, based both on research and on experience in teaching this course, is that neither analogue alone or digital is sufficient in contemporary times. The future is hybrid, making use of the interaction between both offers new ways of teaching such basic knowledge.
Our experience in the course is that students lack more and more, basic observation techniques that are needed in design. Whether this has to do with less attention for drawing and art history, remains a question.

Keywords:

architecture, visualisation, perspective, hand drawing, visual thinking, education in basic design.