Perspex blocks what we did then, we had blocks of Perspex that were coloured and we allowed the users “So to put the blocks together; if you want this department next to that department you start to see how your building will grow.” (Design Director) The use of Perspex blocks provides evidence of designers directly engaging the client with the clinical adjacency requirements. The Design Director elaborated further, it was about trying to engage them. If you get them around a table and you start getting “Yes, them to hold stuff and move them around, they get more engaged and talk about it more. If they can feel that they can work with you and have some kind of rapport even better. And they will start to open up.” Analysis The Perspex blocks may be considered objects of design; Barthes (1968) that objects can have semantic meaning through their physical characteristics, but still retain the potential to make further meaning as semiotic resources. So, whereas drawings and visualizations are specifically communicative resources (being composed of signs to be interpreted), design objects (e.g. marker pens; post-it notes) also convey meaning via their constitution and Further were assigned to the blocks in the briefing room when “essence”. “meanings” designers inform attendees that the blocks were dimensional scale miniatures of specific hospital departments; the blocks thus becoming representations of various hospital departments. The assigning of names to the blocks gives them a direct meaning (adding to the proactive use of the visual colours and dimensional sizing), transforming the blocks into multimodal semiotic resources. In this respect, the clinical matrix “meaningless” (which would be referenced whilst people move the blocks around) gives the blocks a certain
Perspex blocks “So what we did then, we had blocks of Perspex that were coloured and we allowed the users to put the blocks together; if you want this department next to that department you start to see how your building will grow.” (Design Director) The use of Perspex blocks provides evidence of designers directly engaging the client with the clinical adjacency requirements. The Design Director elaborated further, “Yes, it was about trying to engage them. If you get them around a table and you start getting them to hold stuff and move them around, they get more engaged and talk about it more. If they can feel that they can work with you and have some kind of rapport even better. And they will start to open up.” Analysis The Perspex blocks may be considered objects of design; Barthes (1968) that objects can have semantic meaning through their physical characteristics, but still retain the potential to make further meaning as semiotic resources. So, whereas drawings and visualizations are specifically communicative resources (being composed of signs to be interpreted), design objects (e.g. marker pens; post-it notes) also convey meaning via their constitution and “essence”. Further “meanings” were assigned to the blocks in the briefing room when designers inform attendees that the blocks were dimensional scale miniatures of specific hospital departments; the blocks thus becoming representations of various hospital departments. The assigning of names to the blocks gives them a direct meaning (adding to the proactive use of the visual colours and dimensional sizing), transforming the “meaningless” blocks into multimodal semiotic resources. In this respect, the clinical matrix (which would be referenced whilst people move the blocks around) gives the blocks a certain
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