Characterization of Bubble Diagram in the Process of Architectural Form Generation

A bubble diagram is understood as a graphic medium which bridges program and plan in architectural design process. The role of a bubble diagram is either to generate or to explain a plan in relation to its program. Despite the explicit role of a bubble diagram in architectural design process, what a bubble diagram indicates exactly is very ambiguous. Here I attempt to reveal the nature of the bubble diagram more sharply. My main argument is that the ambiguity of a bubble diagram results from the fact that it is used to range two different types of representational formats. Reviewing the theories of shape recognition and shape representations in vision science, I will also argue that the procedural description of architectural design process should be criticized and that the focus of design method research has to be shifted into the representational format of form description in architectural design process.