Abstract and Relative Thinking 
Between Architectural Creativity and Digital Intelligence


 
Architectural education depends on three complementary tools and components, they are, Design, Drafting and Presentation. All three are integrated to fully produce what we known as the conventional architectural education.
The emergence and rapid development of the digital software and hardware technologies, and its wide spread use in all aspects of life including architecture.  This changes the concepts, applications, procedures and even the image by which each discipline is portrayed and later developed.
All disciplines evolve, if not in their applications in concepts, theories, or terminologies. The evolution transforms applications into systems, digital media into information technology, creativity and innovations into artificial intelligence, and real into virtual. 
Architecture was among the first disciplines, which widely benefited and incorporated the digital age. Changes and transformations became inevitable; even if it did not follow any sequential order.  Its effects and influences were not of the same weight, value or quality.
Drafting was the first architectural tool to evolve and to be incorporated into a digital system.  The use of technical tools and systems in drafting and its dependency on learnable manual skills, also its flat 2D geometrical applications make it the most suitable and applicable of all the three architectural tools in the digital system.  Presentation with its articulated complexities and 3D generated graphic and modeling, also its reliance on artistic skills, delayed its digital integration and made it far more difficult than digital drafting.  3D generated graphics have finally been introduced with to represent the state of art in the digital environment. 
Design is defined as the “creative action that fulfills its needs”. Both actions and needs are easily integrated in the digital process.  Yet creativity, the human virtue, which makes design, in both education and practice, is not as well incorporated into the application of the digital phenomena.  Detailed searches for digital solutions, in this field, resulted in what is known as artificial intelligence. Many digital developers and solution founders became obsessed with the idea of joining intuitive freethinking with artificial intelligence.  However, slow the impulsive and spontaneous freethinking exceeded the systematic and controlled intelligence. Random, alternate and variable numerical calculations remain well behind human imaginations, innovations and creativity! 
Ambitious ideas from both educators and developers devised what is being called E (electronic) design courses. It turns out that students remained conventional in design creativity and ways of thinking, and only used the digital solutions in design development and design production.  On the other side solution explorers turned their focus towards the conception of; if you cannot beat them join them.  New digital applications came to simulate imaginations and creativity which gave birth to what is widely known as virtual reality.  Virtual reality, however, focuses on presentation tools rather than the design tools. 
From this process of events we can reach an understanding of a common platform where creativity can be realized and intelligence can be materialized. What will be presented here is not a solution but rather a step forward in an endeavor to reveal properties between creativity and intelligence and how we can act to reduce the differences that may keep them apart.
In basic design, abstractions, for fresh students, present a way of thinking, and an introduction to creativity. That is, in contrary to relative thinking is a way to reduce complexities and to minimize constraints and limitations. It is a method of simplifying ideas and to restart from where creativity and intelligence is becoming one mutual tool in the machine intelligence. 


       