Image Banks: Dialogues between the Past and the Future

• Published in: Environment and behavior 1992-07, Vol.24 (4), p.441-470
• Main Author: Downing, Frances
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Architects; Architecture; Banks; Cognition & reasoning; Design engineering; Education; Graduates; Imagery; Memory; Social research; Students
• ISSN: 0013-9165; 1552-390X
• DOI: 10.1177/0013916592244002

An image bank is defined in this research as the accumulation of an architectural designer's mental imagery of memorable past place-experience. The image bank provides the designer with "known" experience through which the "unknown"—a design problem—can be understood. This research studies the image banks of 117 individuals in two separate studies; 38 of which were professional architects, 38 were architectural graduate students exiting professional education, and 41 were architecture students just entering professional education. The frequency of source between three categories of a designer's lifetime—memorable mental images of places gathered during youth, during years of education, and (for professionals) during the years of practice—are determined. Frequency for the use of memorable place imagery in design is also compared. And finally, the integration of image banks between formal (learned exemplars from the history of "designed" architecture) and informal (memorable places generally of vernacular or common architecture) place imagery was studied through multidimensional scalogram analysis. It was found that practitioners possessed highly fluid image banks that provided an easy alignment of ideas no matter whether the ideas came from formal or informal exemplars. Students displayed more rigidity by keeping formal and informal place images separate in their image banks.