You always aim to achieve that moment of insight that leads to ingenuity and novelty in your design, but sometimes it remains elusive. This book presents a variety of techniques for mapping and making hands-on design/build projects, and relates this work to real architecture. It helps you to learn new ways of seeing and making that will enhance your creative design process and enable you to experience moments that lead to ingenuity in design.

Each of the book's two parts, "Seeing" and "Making," is organized according to technique, which ranges from quantitative analysis and abstraction to pattern and scale, to provide you with a framework for mapping and hands-on exercises. Interviews with architects Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Atelier Bow-Wow) and Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto (Reiser + Umemoto) give you perspective on using these exercises in practice.