Rossella Stufano, Dino Borri and Giovanni Rabino on "Creativity and Planning Process in Architecture: a Cognitive Approach"

1. Input 2012
Cagliari, May 10-12 2012
Creativity and Planning Process in Architecture:
a Cognitive Approach
Rossella Stufano, Dino Borri, Giovanni Rabino
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Università di Pisa, Italy
Dipartimento di Ingegneria delle Acque e di Chimica, Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

2. Summary
- Creativity
- Mental images
- Creativity in Architecture
- The architect’s writings
- Memory
- Ontologies
--Experiments
- Conclusions and further research
- References

3. Creativity
Creativity is considered as an innate ability that reveals itself
through original creations.
Creativity is a particular attitude towards a non-
conventional transformation of reality which is represented
as memory; it all depends on contexts, environments,
teachers, reference points, and choices of life.

4. The human thought is a “complex machine”, develops an
activity made of many parallel processes that may combine
and operate in various ways.
When one wants to create a new idea there is an objective
but this isn’t defined with accuracy: a unique and exact
answer doesn’t exist and a unique and rigidly determined
procedure doesn’t exist either, (Johnson-Laird, 1998).

5. As all mental processes a creative process starts from some
given elements and hasn’t a precise purpose, but only some
pre-existent restrictions or some criteria that it has to satisfy;
a creative process gives a result that is new for the person,
and the result may not really be original: a mental process
may be creative even if other people have had the same idea,
(Johnsons-Laird, 1998).

6. Mental images
Mental images are connected with the visual memory one;
man has the ability to create new own mental images and to
recall perceptions at a long time distance, (Arielli, 2003).
This ability to recall a visual image even after many years is
the evidence that a long time memory exists.
Kosslyn (1973) has developed a model of visual memory,
calling “visual buffer” what Baddeley (1990) then called
“visual-spatial scratch pad”.

7. Creativity in Architecture
In literature few authors have tried to construct the notion of
planning on clear and universal basis.
“Studying the planning process we discover that planning is
included in the theoretical environment of problem solving”,
(Simon,1995).
Spatial creativity is a place on which it is more difficult to
establish an objective; an ambit of reference for reading
artistic creation or architecture creation sends back to a game
of resemblances and reminiscences and sends back to draw
memories of the other artists and architects.

8. The architect’s writings
In the planning composition the architects organize the
disposition of the primary geometrical forms according to
cognitive environment in which they have been formed and
according to the political environment from which planning
requests emerge.
Creativity is expressed in a context of a strong intention; it is
the pressing intention that finalize the choices and that same
cognitive process from which the planning action descend.

9. Every master refers to the memories of the places of his
childhood. Their architectonic experiences that remain deeply
rooted go on lodging as memory images and perception
recollections even in the planning processes of the
professionals; their past experience remains a constant
reference horizon.

10. Mental images and memory objects make up that
database in which the expert agent has his
reference. The various places of his memory, which
constitute his database in continuous evolution are a
necessary part of the cognitive structure.

11. Memory
Memories are trips, places of habit, constructive experiences.
The core for a growing creativity are memories, that’s why we
chose to open the architects’ sentences to get out their
mental objects and making hypothesis and working with
them according to a spatial key design.

12. I talk about places: they express well my active participation
to architecture in an active and even in a theoretical way.
Often architecture identifies itself with the object and with
geography. Today I find in domestic and private trips, in
public and scientific trips all the past and all the present and
every outline is worth the most abstract statement,
(Rossi,1981).

21. The role of analogies using memories
The role of analogies is extremely important in the unfolding
of architectural process design.
Similarities are the core of perception and of extrapolation of
the underlying structures of real order.
Finding such structures is the core of intelligence. Making
analogies is the core of intelligence, (Hofstadter, 1995).
The perception of structures, their extrapolation and their
generalizations are fundamental for creativity.

22. The attempt to define the essence of creativity
consists in having a strong intuition for what is
interesting, in using it recursively, applying it to the
meta-level and changing it accordingly, (Hofstadter,
1995).

23. Ontologies
An ontology defines a common vocabulary for researchers
who need to share information in a domain.
The ontology provides a conceptual framework for the
representation of information which is general and sufficient
in detail so as to provide a rich structure support for the
construction of models of the world, (Bateman, 1992).

24. We are interested in designing an ontology that functions as a
special metalanguage for encoding:
(i) pictures,
(ii) the memory of the images,
(iii) the geometric shapes (extrapolated from the
memory image),
(iv) the memory of geometrical forms (a formal
declination in the composition of the elements
during the composition process).

25. Experiments
We observed architects drawing both without and with a
given design objective.
The development of the experiment demonstrates how the
same planning request activates in the expert agent particular
links and not others.
These links start a specific, special and adventurous trip in
memories and in study references. They may be technical,
personal references, more or less revealed, more or less
aware, not randomly generated by a planning question which
is potentially fortuitous and substantially unknown.

26. Duel duet - Siza – D’Alba

27. Round table
The meeting between left-handed and
right-handed architect

29. City Door

35. Conclusions and further research
This paper aims to describe and to draw attention to the vital
importance for creativity in the design process in architecture
of memories.
We see the creative process in architecture as something that
rests on a solid base of memory.
This may seem counterintuitive because often to create
means to create something completely unrelated and
independent from the situations in outline or by prior
knowledge of the agent.

36. The relation between memory and project isn’t deterministic.
From the same element of memory may descend different
declensions of intuition and choice.
The path of planning conception is reiterative as regards the
references memories, as regards the imposed logic and
situational restrictions and it is not linear as regards the feed-
back of the same choices that are made from time to time.

37. The ontology in a configuration of an interactive virtual
desktop is here conceived as a tool that is a constant
'expansion' of personal memory, from time to time to be
interrogated further and expanded.

38. We have indeed shown that the reference to memory is a key
element in the mental mechanism of designing.
For a further research, the objective is therefore to have a
tool that can be placed in front of architect’s own memories.
Memories are accumulated, constantly renewed and
expanded, and we need a tool to not forget to have them,
making them available to each new architectural project to be
developed according to architect’s own creativity.

39. References
Schon, D.A. (1983), The Reflexive Practitioner, New York, Basic Books (trad.it. a cura di
Angela Barbanente, 1993, Il professionista Riflessivo, Bari, Dedalo).
Jerome Bruner, 1966, Studies in Cognitive Growth, Wiley, New York
Jerry Fodor, 1975, The Language of Thought, Harvard University Press
Aaron D. Baddeley, 1990, Human Memory: Theory and Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, London
Herbert A. Simon, 1995, Machine as Mind, in Android Epistemology, MIT Press,
Cambridge
Hatchuel, A; B. Weil, 2002, La théorie C-K : Fondements et usages d'une théorie unifiée
de la conception, Colloque Sciences de la conception, Lyon 15-16 mars
Zenon Pylyshyn, 1973, What the Mind's Eye Tells the Mind's Brain, Psychological
Bulletin 80 (1):1-24, University of California, Berkeley

40. Philip N.Johnson-Laird (1988), The Computer and the mind. An introduction to
Cognitive Science, London, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. (trad.it. di Patrizia
Tabossi,1997, La mente e il computer, introduzione alla scienza cognitiva, Bologna,
Società Editrice il Mulino
Edoardo Boncinelli (2008), Come nascono le idee, Bari, Editori Laterza
Emanuele Arielli (2003), Pensiero e Progettazione, Milano, Bruno Mondatori
Peter Zumthor, (1998), Pensare Architettura, Baden/Svizzera, Peter Zumthor e Lars
Muller Publishers ( trad. it. a cura di Maddalena Disch e Francesco Dal Co, 2003,
Pensare Architettura, Milano, Mondatori Electa spa)
Natalya F. Noy and Deborah L. Mcguinness, Ontology Development 101: A Guide to
Creating Your First Ontology, Stanford University, Stanford
John A. Bateman, The Theoretical Status of Ontologies in Natural Language Processing,
Projekt komet and Penman Project GMD/IPSI and USC/ISI,1992
Aldo Rossi, (rist.2009), Autobiografia Scientifica, Milano, ilSaggiatore

41. Douglas Hofstadter (1995), Concetti fluidi ed analogie creative, Milano, Adelphi
John Anderson (1983), Architecture of cognition, Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence
Erlbaum Associated
John Anderson (1995), Learning and Memory, New York, John Wiley and Sons