Collaborative imagining: The interactive use of gestures, talk, and graphic representation in architectural practice

Abstract

This article examines the use of imagination as a communicative resource in interaction. Using actual examples of imagination in action collected during anthropological fieldwork at an architecture firm in California, I develop the concept of ‘collaborative imagining’ as a social, jointly-produced activity in which the objects of thought are created and manipulated in the shared space of face-to-face interaction. Such an activity relies upon a number of semiotic resources, and the paper examines three in particular: talk, gestures, and material objects, taking into consideration the talk and gestures of all participants in an interaction as well as the material surround available to the interactants. This view suggests two new ways to think about imagination. First, imagining is not a purely individual act but is also a product of and resource for group interaction; second, the objects of imaginative thought are not necessarily mental images, but can potentially be constructed in the material world with real, material components.