Environmental design as a process is a communication activity wherein the designer continuously formulates, records, and presents developing ideas using his vernacular, sketches, working drawings, and models. The success of the design solution depends to a certain extent on the sophistication of the communication tools used; there is a significant lack of sophistication in the tools used in the transition of ideas between the initial verbal phases and the final visual phases. This paper proposes a notational language of diagrammatic elements to provide the designer with a communication tool that permits him to visualize basic design ideas at a high level of abstraction. The primitive elements of this language represent a set of ideas that, in various combinations, recurrently make up the basic entities of various problems in environmental design.
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