FACILITATING STUDENTS' DESIGN SENSITIVITY AND CREATIVITY IN DESIGN DETAILING AND MATERIALISATION THROUGH PHYSICAL MODELS AND PROTOTYPES

With respect to structured design processes, physical models are developed with the intention to give additional insight to the analytical, explorative, creative, detailing and materialisation design activities of the designer. In design education, the final two activities are often underemphasised in a structured design process, as educators tend to teach students to focus on defining problems and developing creative design solution at a strategic and conceptual level. Modes of representation in the form of holistic physical models are then developed to complement the understanding on these early stages of design activities. The neglect of detailing and materialisation activities, because of time constraints, increased accessibility to other modes of presentation such as CAD, or students ' misconceptions that creative exploration should only take place in the idea and conceptualisation stages of the design process, is a phenomenon, which need to be seriously addressed in design education. Furthermore, the student designer is not always aware of 3-D representation tools which are suited to facilitate such a divergent and creative process in this detailing and materialisation stage. The aim of this article is to propose a systematic approach for design students to select the most appropriate models and prototypes to facilitate divergence and creativity in the detailing and materialisation stages of the designing process.