Diagrammatic Approaches in Architectural Design Addressing architectural and urban design through the use of diagrams Carlos L. Marcos 1 , Pedro Pignatelli Fernández de Arévalo 2 1,2 Universidad de Alicante 1 carlos.marcos@ua.es 2 pignatelli@gmail.com Diagrams have an extraordinary potential as a tool for the analysis of architectural and urban problems.They can also be considered a design strategy in themselves according to Eisenman's understanding of this graphic notation system. Diagrams have proved to be a valid design tool for architecture beyond the professional practice within the design studio. Students were given a design tool which was alien to their previous practices and it worked well as a propositional graphic device for the design of an architectural artefact. As a graphic tool that may be embodied in grids the possibility to enrich the design by superimposition techniques may well serve as a trigger for collaborative work, embedding in the design different layers of meaning and design solutions proposed by various students enhancing a level of complexity which the proposal of a single student may not achieve. From a didactic point of view, the use of these design strategy among the class, enabled to tackle different problems so that the work in the urban scale was also successfully addressed as part of the course aims. Keywords: diagrams, architectural design, urban design, collaborative work INTRODUCTION Diagrams are present throughout the history of archi- tecture. From the Hippodamus of Miletus’ urban grid organising the Piraeus, or the Etruscan urban plan- ning based on cardo and decumanus to the focalized urban grids characteristic of baroque planning; from the classical compositional systems to Durand’s de- sign method or Le Corbusier’s regulatory traces. They are no modern invention. In the last two decades diagrams have become a common place in architectural design among some conspicuous architectural practices. It is worth men- tioning that in recent decades there have been archi- tects like Peter Eisenman who have exploited their use, generated an architectural theory and worked in an innovative way with them. Grids -which could be regarded as schematic order systems- as well as di- agrams -essentially defined by grids- make possible architectural shorthands (Eisenman 1999, p.27), true graphic notations which have the capability to define the basic hierarchy and scale of the different parts in relation to the whole, as well as the topological connectivity relationships within the morphological structure. Moreover, grids set main directions, align- DESIGN CONCEPTS & STRATEGIES | Explorations - Volume 1 - eCAADe 36 | 595