Visual and geometric reasoning for introductory figural space design

The ability of engineers and architects to visualize and reason about geometric aspects of physical objects and processes is crucial to the success of their professional activities. This visual reasoning capability forms the essential foundation for engineering and architecture education. This paper describes the figural space design problem in the architectural design module of the visual reasoning tutor system. Specifically, geometric reasoning methods developed to provide evaluation of the student solution in an introductory figural space design problem using four sticks are described in this paper together with the pedagogy of the problem.