Creative architectural designers often employ forms from other domains, retrieving, adapting, and including them in designs in whole or in part. We focus here on retrieval, searching image collections for relevant forms to support creative designing. Retrieval of images may be indexed on conceptual design features, on function, and (in domains that involve a physical artifact) on visual similarity, or shape. We propose an approach to providing information for creative design that is simple to use and integrated with the act of creative designing, which in architecture is carried out chiefly through sketching and diagramming. We argue that to inspire creativity, image collections from diverse domains can be valuable to the designer. We describe Drawing Analogies, a sketch-based visual reference program.

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