Creativity is often thought of as the ability to generate ideas that are both innovative and Functional. Donald MacKinnon, for example, suggests that “creativeness” fulfills at least three essential conditions:
“It involves a response or an idea that is novel or at the very least statistically infrequent. But novelty or originality of thought or action, while a necessary aspect of creativity is not sufficient. If a response is to lay claim to being part of the creative process, it must to some extent be adaptive to, or of reality. It must serve to solve a problem, fit a situation, or accomplish some recognizable goal. And thirdly, true creativity involves a sustaining of the original insight, an evaluation and elaboration of it, a developing to the full.”
MacKinnon, therefore, sees creativity as a combination of arts, sciences, technology, and Psychological testing. Nevertheless creativity does not necessarily represent an exceptional ability. The imagination of a creative individual is, however, closely related to the intensity and clarity with which he or she is
Able to sense, intuit and successfully analyze the problem or challenge in question. According to Holtzman, in his work dealing with bureaucracy and creativity: “Although creativity can be defined as a very valuable invention or novelty of concept and discovery, any adaptive change by an individual or group has within it an element of creativity,” which often leads to new, more effective organizational forms and relations.
In architectural terms, the ‘artistic’ architect looks for especially novel and statistically infrequent responses or occurrences at the level of the whole structure in its context—the ‘big picture’. yet highly skilled professionals, who are more bound to established tradition might think it quite outlandish eccentric, perhaps to seek artistic expression in architecture which exceeds the limits of what has been symmetrically accepted by mainstream traditions in architectural development to date.
Architects often approach design issues from diametrically opposite points of view. While they operate according to similar standards derived from the social sciences with respect to human need, they often seek standardized that are widely divergent in the way in which they seek to address or give expression to architectural visions and initiatives.
A creation is voluntary and conscious; it involves volition and cannot be reduced to a process of automation. There is a well-established meaning attached to the act of ‘Making’ or ‘Doing’ which we call ‘Creative’, the products: a poem, a play, a painting, a piece of music or sketches for buildings of structures under contemplation, the product of imagination; this is what refer to as ‘creation’.
The creation or ‘making’ of an artifact, the exercise or practice of a craft, comes in two stages:
- Imagining, making or coming up with the plan entailed in the origination or creation of the ‘object’ in question.
- Imposing that plan on certain matter, or fabricating it, giving it substance, form, and, perhaps, therefore, utility of some sort.
What later becomes the actual design of a structure is, therefore, often initially thought of as an imaginary design, where the architect has used his creative power in the imagination of the design, in response to his or her understanding of the conceived purpose of the structure.
All of the above is the case whether the structure in question is a religious or a secular building.
This is the nature of architectural creation regardless of the character or function in question. Hence, the creation of an architectural design is most decidedly an instance of imaginative creation, even at the stage of the idea itself. The same thing applies, of course, to the creation of a poem or a picture, or any work of art. The boundaries of art are enormously fluid. In the words of Frank Barron (1958), an American psychologist: “By his imagination he may make new universes which are near to his heart’s desire.”
The following three points serve to summarize our working definition of creativity as we have Developed it so far:
- A creator is one who, through the power of imagination, achieves a novel synthesis of extant ideational elements, novel at least insofar as he/she is concerned.
- A creation represents the simple embodiment—tangible or non-tangible—of this new combination of ideational elements.
- Put most simply, to create is to combine existing elements in new ways
