Exploring the Creative Process in Architecture Students and Professionals

Although the creative process has been the subject of many studies, there is no consensus on its stages or its facilitating and inhibiting factors because the research has been carried out in very different disciplinary fields. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to research the creative process in architecture students and professionals. We used the Grounded Theory methodology and the study was carried out in Catalonia (Spain). We conducted 28 in-depth interviews with 16 architecture professionals, 8 students and 4 university lecturers who all defined themselves as creative. From the information obtained in the interviews we identified the main facilitating and inhibiting factors in the three stages of the creative process: Preparation, Ideation, and Verification & Evaluation. The conceptualisation of the three basic stages of the creative process in architecture gives us a new vision for understanding how architecture students and architects are involved in the creative process to produce different creative results. Finally, the research reveals different theoretical and practical implications for the academic and professional fields of architecture.

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Morlà, T., Cascón-Pereira, R. & Brunet, I. (2019). Exploring the Creative Process in Architecture Students and Professionals. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 34., 100608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2019.100608