Bryan R LawsonThe University of Sheffield | Sheffield · School of Architecture (SSoA)
Bryan R Lawson
DipArch, MSc, PhD, RIBA, RegAr
About
165
Publications
133,174
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4,944
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 1974 - present
Education
October 1969 - May 1973
September 1968 - October 1969
September 1962 - June 1968
Oxford school of architecture
Field of study
- Architecture
Publications
Publications (165)
A companion about learning to design for students on Degree and other couses that are design based
The paper introduces a wide range of Environment-Behaviour evidence from research into healthcare environments. It explains why so much data can be found on this building typology and argues that it actually has a far wider and more generic value. The paper suggests that we are largely failing to get such generic evidence-based knowledge applied in...
The study provides an overview of architectural designers’ cognitive behaviour in a conceptual phase of design like studio tutorials. This involves formulating a Cognitive Interaction Matrix that preserves the dialectical and interactional characteristics of design conversation protocol being examined. The matrix facilitates the process of encoding...
Design as a cognitive taskWhat is so different about design?New ways of communicating with computersConversations with the situationA more positive approachReferences
The twenty-one contributions to About: Designing draw on a rich variety of methodological positions, research backgrounds and design disciplines including architecture, product design, engineering, applied linguistics, communication studies, cognitive psychology, and discourse studies. Collectively these studies comprise a state-of-the-art overview...
This book is designed for all students, teachers, practitioners and researchers in architecture and design. To enable all readers to explore the book in a flexible way, the authors’ words are always found on the left hand page. On the right are diagrams, illustrations and the voices of designers, teachers and students and occasionally others too.
This research examines how novice and advanced design students perceive different things from conceptual sketches. This is chiefly explored through their descriptions of these sketches to a member of their peer group. It shows differences between the two groups in terms of their use of formal and symbolic references and explores what this might tel...
How Designers Think is based on Bryan Lawson's many observations of designers at work, interviews with designers and their clients and collaborators. This extended work is the culmination of twenty-five years' research and shows the author's belief that we all can learn to design better. The creative mind continues to have power to surprise and thi...
There is a powerful cocktail of circumstances governing the way decisions are made during the architectural design process of a building project. There is considerable potential for misunderstandings, inappropriate changes, change which give rise to unforeseen difficulties, decisions which are not notified to all interested parties, and many other...
We have been using the term ‘computer-aided design’ now in architecture for about four decades. But how accurate and realistic is this? Have we really managed to get computers to actually aid creative design and how effective is it? This paper discusses how we support the central creative design process itself. It does this by exploring the implica...
The paper begins by outlining some methodological problems, concluding that to understand design expertise we will need to recognise that such practice includes the roles of teams, communication and shared experiences and understandings. It explores the significance of experience in expertise focussing on the way precedent stored in the form of epi...
Each chapter deals with a different technique from which we can best represent and make explicit the forms of knowledge used by designers. The book explores whether design knowledge is special, and attempts to get to the root of where design knowledge comes from. Crucially, it focuses on how designers use drawings in communicating their ideas and h...
This paper is about learning in design and how can we measure this learning. The work reported here is based on a study of the actual practice of procurement, design and construction of a number of clients who repeatedly commission work of a similar nature. The paper sets out the background of a project entitled LEAF (Learning from Experience—Apply...
The Sheffield Urban Contextual Databank project was set up to develop digital means of transferring the physical database amassed in the Sheffield Urban Study project to suitable formats accessible through multiple routes. We have developed a Web-based virtual city platform capable of displaying urban contextual information containing 3D models and...
Your leader (arq 6/1, p3) correctly concluded that the latest round of the UK Government's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results are the best yet overall for those departments in universities that include the subject of architecture. But we are in danger of misinterpreting this complex set of results as a result of some other more emotive and...
We are frequently told by its exponents that computeraided design (CAD) liberates designers and gives them new ways of envisioning their work, but is this really true? CAD in architecture is examined to see to what extent it has enhanced creativity in design. This is partly
done by applying a test of creativity advanced by contemporary architect He...
Design is central to the discipline of
architecture. Despite this, the
question as to whether design
constitutes a form of research seems
to raise more questions and strong
feelings than any other aspect of the
UK Government's research
assessments of university architecture
schools (arq 6/1, p5). No one is better
fitted to set out the argu...
For various purposes, virtual city applications have been developed around the globe to provide users with online resources and services over the Internet. Following our research on the Sheffield Urban Contextual Databank (SUCoD) project, this paper presents an alternative framework for building virtual cities, which goes beyond conventional static...
The value of a new evidence-based design approach to healthcare architecture is described and the range of evidence available introduced. The paper then focuses on the challenge of applying empirical research knowledge to a creative design process. Examples are given of the results of such an approach and of how we can develop design tools to trans...
John Wells-Thorpe, South Downs Health NHS Trust Trust Initiative When self-governing NHS Trusts were set up a decade ago they were given a surprising amount of autonomy. Hitherto, capital projects had been subject to supervision by Regional architects and others further up the line, with local input being confined to detail. All of a sudden the who...
Psychiatric and orthopaedic patients treated in new or upgraded units rated their experience and treatment significantly higher than those on old wards. Length of stay on the new psychiatric unit was lower than in the old unit. Orthopaedic patients treated on a refurbished ward required fewer analgesics than those on the older ward. Patients treate...
This paper discusses the history and current state of development of the application of computers to architectural design. The process of trying to develop useful roles for the computer in the design process is seen as a yet unfinished journey. As we travel, we simultaneously develop more understanding of the design process and acquire more sophist...
The paper discusses the problem of CAD in architectural design from the point of view of aiding creativity. It argues that so far there is no real evidence that this has been achieved. An explanation for this is offered and the authors suggest that more work needs to be done on how we hold conversations about design. The authors also conclude that,...
At a time when the architectural profession in the United Kingdom and elsewhere is undergoing considerable change, a clear understanding of the relationship between the services that architects can, and want to, provide and those desired and valued by our clients is vital. The architect's unique skill has been described as that of design. What does...
We advance a view that design is a combination of many types of thinking, maintaining that concurrent verbal reports are best at revealing particular types of thinking (specifically the short term focus of the designer). There are two issues of using concurrent verbal reports to elicit types of design thinking: (1) do the words ‘thought aloud’ accu...
The paper draws together findings from studies using several research paradigms but concentrates on recent work into the nature of the design process as described by a number of internationally respected architects. It analyses and explains the central creative act of the design process by introducing several key concepts. These include the guiding...
Questions
Questions (2)
Projects
Projects (3)
Developing a better and broader understanding of how good place making can contribute to our quality of life.
A number of people have kindly asked what I am doing at the moment. Well technically I am retired but somehow we academics don't really ever quite give up. It is now quite a few years since I wrote the latest edition of How Designers Think which I have kept up to date with the latest relevant research. My publishers wanted to see a new edition since this book has been in continuous print since 1980 and they consider the title to be successful. However I have developed a slightly different idea.
This book has always tried to serve two audiences at once. First the student learning to design, and second the researcher into design processes in a field that has blossomed since 1980. When Kees Dorst and I wrote Design Expertise we continued to follow this double path. I thought a new edition would perpetuate that double target. So I have decided to completely write a new book entirely and specifically for students. This is in effect a completely new book written in a different way and a very different order that hopefully enables the developing design students to have the book support them all the way through their course. Whether the title will stay as above or change remains a matter t o be decided once the book is complete.
