Elements of Form and Space

Form changes noise into music, simple marks into alphabets and writing and coloured brush strokes into painting. For designers form gives shape and structure to the raw materials of the world shaped by data, information, intelligence, creativity and imagination. Form is much more than the appearance or aesthetic properties of an object created by its outer surface. Form depends on the users viewpoint and the environment in which it is located; it is the expression of a product’s practicality, usability, and desirability and may convey social and cultural meaning or what John Dewey calls its intellectual, practical, and emotional characteristics. It is all aspects of an objects character, including the values and culture to which it belongs. The totality of sensory experience and perception of every object is, in some way, conveyed by its form. The Elements of Form and Space Studio refined and sharpened the students’ perceptual and aesthetical sensibility to all aspects of form making including: geometric relationships; form integration; form manipulation and form transitions explored through sketching, drawing and physical and virtual modelling. Students gained the skills to understand and apply basic principles of form generation and to articulate their form ideas visually and verbally.