something on eisenman's tranformations of form maybe?
that ted talks lecture by joshua prince-ramus? he does deal with process in it. tedblog.typepad.com

I would reference Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto as a guideline for creating processes.

Design to me is all about process. I am a machinist - I am currently working on a process framework that I have a hunch will be fruitful.

When in studio, I would get flashes of images when discussing the project, that generally tended to reappear in the final project. These are the guides/hunches.

The important part to note is that the process is a 'design' in itself. You design the process to produce certain results. For that you need to know generally where you are going and what you want, and you must prepared to discard or modify the process to achieve your aims.

The process is a tool, and you need not lose your temper when you start to hit yourself on the thumb - modify the tool, modify the target, modify the environment - but you still have to nail it.

The process is not static or immovable.
Nor is it God.

Precedents are useful, so research similar projects or similar premises.

The other key point is to start anywhere, with anything and focus on producing, producing, producing.

Refer Mau.

That's where I get stuck. Produce what? Haha.

Produce anything.

A process sheet from one of my presentations:

processing is a kind of editing.

steven holl, for example, makes watercolour sketches every morning. they are very brief, spatial ideas, plucked out of wherever. when he designs, he selects, edits and reworks these ideas, finding new combinations for them and working them into a design.

you might find it helpful to make your first productions not-architecture. it doesn't particularly matter what, just not-architecture. draw a response to a book you're reading, or model a memory of some place you might have been once, or might just have imagined. or take fifty photographs of the structure of cabbages. if these all seem pointless and silly, think of something that isn't silly.

you have to give yourself something to work with. the first things you produce will always be wrong, but that's good, because at least you know what you're trying not to do.

agfa8x, I agree,

Th process is not a standalone unit. It is not something you create or use and then leave untouched. The process is an re/active framework in which to make decisions...

the book posted above is quite eggselent. with thoughts on the creative process by people who were actually creative. and in all fields. check it out today and start creating!!!

simply put: draw something. make something. it doesn't matter what. then you have something to which you can respond.

I'll echo everyone else here: start with something, anything, so you can respond to it. Anyone can create all kinds of things, but a good designer knows waht ideas to throw out and what to keep. If your first idea(s) is something bad, at least you then know what not to do.

At the very least, do a bubble/adjacency diagram:



You don't have to include the omnipotent all-seeing rat-god if you don't think he will be a future user of your building.

LB's post reminds me of a really sketchy schematic plan with lots of notes and information all over the place on it that I used in to convey some ideas at a meeting. At one point, the client asked why I had drawn a rat by the main entrance. And for some reason I had taken the time to Sharpie some blood around it. I suppose next I should've presented a box full of doll arms and legs.

i took this american lit class in grad school as a break from architecture. it was on herman melville. i actually received an a++ on my paper about bartleby the scrivener. the prof said once about the writing of some of the students. "if its shit, it stinks"