Schematizing Basic Design in Ilhan Koman’s “Embryonic” Approach

With an outwardly professed interest in mathematics, Ilhan Koman has produced his nonfigurative, abstract sculptures mostly as various series of forms. The difference and similarity between the works in any series is achieved through repetitions and variations of certain relations between parts. This corresponds to creating a relational system and it requires having control over the underlying principles of that system much as basic design students are encouraged to do. In order to substantiate the implications of work such as Koman’s in learning about design thinking, we first delineate the mathematical concepts in Koman’s “embryonic” approach through visual schemas. These visual schemas are then supplied to first-year design students as guides and design constraints as well as tools to formalize their design thinking. We observe that introducing Koman’s schemas to students helps them grasp how they establish relations between parts in their own design processes.