Finding your Design Concept can lead to the Best Design

Hi Students,

Often you can be stuck for inspiration and a design concept: you may have the constructive discontent but then reach a point where you are simply not inspired. At this point trying to find a design concept to latch onto can be important. So, what is a design concept: well, simply an abstract idea or element on inspiration that you can follow quite narrowly to focus your design. An abstract concept maybe a shape for example the spiral or it could be a natural object and movement for example an albatross flying.

How a designer plays with this concept is then open to that individual designer and their creative nature. Whether a designer sketches, paints or sculpts to come up with a variety of ideas following that specific design concept.

Here are two sophisticated and structures based examples which show how two abstract concepts have led to inspirational architectural design. The question for you to ask, once you have seen the two examples, is how can you be inspired by abstract concepts to create your own interesting projects in Design Technology and hopefully in your final design project?

• Santiago Calatrava: watch this video which is very interesting in drawing you into the world of a creative designer / architect and how he thinks and creates depending on the conceptual ideas and emotions of the project.

• EFFEKT Architecture Studio designs a treetop walkway that is obviously inspired by a simple concept that they follow through with rigorously to produce an outstanding final design and project