Archinect - News

AI-induced creativity and the novelty dilemma looming over architectural design

2024-08-08T12:23:00-04:00

The impact of Generative AI on human creativity is one of the most observed and debated knock-on effects of users adapting to ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other large language models (LLMs). Now, a new study has shown a "social dilemma" that occurs when creatives are given a choice between AI-assisted prompts, which resulted in better-scoring work that was nevertheless plagued by the question of novelty.

In the views of authors Anil R. Doshi and Oliver P. Hauser from the University of Exeter and University College London (UCL), this dilemma "point[s] to an increase in individual creativity at the risk of losing collective novelty."

What can be gleaned from this study in an architectural sense calls into question many of the basic precepts for augmentation, namely that it affords designers a greater range of ingenuity in terms of form, program, scale, and functional spaces without significant drawbacks. Recently there has been a shift in the zeitgeist that had previously considered the ...

California passes new copyright protection law for publicly-available architectural drawings

2022-09-21T15:00:00-04:00

California’s state legislature has passed a bill sponsored by the American Institute of Architects California (AIACA) that will limit public access to copyrighted architectural drawings for the first time.

The recently-signed SB 1214 concerns drawings that were submitted to local and state government offices and will take effect on January 1st, 2023. San Francisco-based architect Cary Bernstein is the member who initiated the act and says it will enhance the protections already provided by the Federal Copyright Act that are not properly being upheld by planning processes within the state.

“The law balances California's Ralph M. Brown Act which ensures the public's right ‘to attend and participate in meetings of local legislative bodies’ with long-standing federal copyright laws that protect architectural drawings,” Bernstein said in a statement. “I happen to love law, and this issue allowed me to indulge my interest through a project for [the chapter].”

Drawings, site plans, and ot...

Three tips for overcoming procrastination during the creative process

2022-05-19T11:53:00-04:00

As creative professionals, architects are prone to procrastination. In his acclaimed book The War of Art, author Steven Pressfield breaks down the many reasons why procrastination is a prevalent part in the creative process. “Procrastination is the most common manifestation of [creative resistance] because it’s the easiest to rationalize,” Pressfield wrote. “We don’t tell ourselves, 'I’m never going to write my symphony.' Instead we say, 'I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.'”

For some experts on the topic, procrastination in the creative process is a necessary evil. One such expert is Alice Boyes, a former clinical psychologist and author of the book Stress-Free Productivity. On a recent episode of the Harvard Business Review IdeaCast, Boyes explains that “lots of forms of problem solving benefit from an incubation period where you take a pause between when you hear the problem and when you start working on it.”

Related on Archinect: In school, somet...

The creative power of walking

2019-10-08T08:00:00-04:00

Sitting there, program in hand, concept underway, and with constraints to abide by, we consider the possibilities. The design process isn't a scientific thing, there's an artistic aspect to it, one that sometimes leaves us searching for the perfect solution. We arrive at something, but know when it isn't right, it could be better, we think. But, how do we get there? We sketch, we model, we converse, we charrette, and yet sometimes there are still those moments of creative contemplation where we can't put our finger on that thing that we know lies in the back of our minds. Historically, walking has been one way to bring that thing to the forefront of our creative pursuit.

The School of Athens by Raphael.

Mobile pondering

In 335 BCE, after his pupil, Alexander the Great, rose to power and conquered Athens, Aristotle began teaching at the Lyceum, a school of philosophy whose followers would later become known as the Peripatetics. In the famous fresco The School of Athens, Italian Renai...

How can mindfulness make you a better designer?

2019-10-01T17:00:00-04:00

As designers, we often are presented with an overwhelming amount of data to accompany a design problem. There are the client desires, the code constraints, zoning, the desires of the design team, materials, structural systems, and the list goes on. Sometimes, we can feel bombarded or crippled from receiving too much info. Where do I start? We might think to ourselves.

Nadia Surtees, a design researcher at IDEO makes a case for taking a mindfulness approach in our design thinking. "Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the fathers of modern mindfulness, describes the practice as 'paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally,'" she writes. She goes on to list 5 ways she and her colleagues at IDEO go about using mindfulness to tackle tough projects:

"Adopt a beginner's mindset." According to Surtees, a beginner's mindset means "starting fresh, assuming nothing, and living the question." It can be tempting to assume we have the answer to something or to draw on our prev...

The power of play, how childhood toys inspired architects and their designs

2019-04-08T20:14:00-04:00

Everyone can recall their favorite toy as a child. For some, these childhood toys inspired interests and passions that led to specific career pursuits as an adult. Thinking back on one's own experience with toys like LEGO and Lincoln Logs, these simple pieces of wood and plastic led to endless amounts of fun and creative possibility. As a child, I recall spending hours playing with Little Tykes Waffle Blocks and Playskool's colored wooden blocks.

1982 Vintage Playskool Colored Wood Blocks

Play-based learning, especially with blocks or other building-focused models, enhances a child's ability to problem solve and stimulate creative decision making. These simple, tactical objects allow for children to experience and understand the world around them, especially the built environment. Through stacking and connecting, these types of educational toys enable children to experience trial and error through forms of continuous self-assessment. The anticipation of stacking one more block on t...

Piecing together creativity with Atelier-D's OBLIKA architectural puzzle

2014-05-09T18:43:00-04:00

Twenty-two is the magic number for the OBLIKA architectural puzzle. Crafted by Jonathan Dorthe of Atelier-D from Montreal, Canada the 22-piece wooden puzzle could be a nifty tool for coming up with new design ideas or simply a fun therapeutic way to take a break during those hectic weeks at work or school.

Plus, the puzzle's sleek aesthetics make it appropriate for creative minds of any age. Each geometric piece is made of 9 1/2'' x 9 1/2'' wide x 1/4'' thick wood that features an etched linear design. Then you can arrange the pieces inside the wooden frame to form a neat square or skip the frame and go crazy putting together any shape you want. The puzzle also includes a paper grid with examples to spark ideas.

"I was inspired by a childhood game 'tangram' which is a simpler version. I wanted to make it more architectural and more complex," Dorthe wrote in an email. "That's why I added lots of pieces of different shapes and even circular shapes. The laser etched pattern adds a graphi...

Atelier Bow-Wow helps design Honolulu's first "indoor park" pavilion

2014-02-12T14:30:00-05:00

Interisland Terminal from Honolulu is on a mission to show the creative potential of their city's neighborhood with their latest endeavor known as Kaka'ako Agora. Located in the neighborhood of Kaka'ako, the project is an empty warehouse-turned-community space designed and planned in collaboration with Japanese architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow.

Surrounded by plenty of local outdoor parks, Kaka'ako Agora will be the first "indoor park" for the Honolulu neighborhood. Once complete, the new space will serve as a local gathering area for various public programs, educational use, and other community-driven purposes.

Interisland Terminal recently launched a Kickstarter with a $15,000 goal to partially raise funds to purchase building materials for the pavilion's final pieces. The Kickstarter closes on Sunday evening, March 16.

For more details on Kaka'ako, click here.

Expensive cities are killing creativity

2013-12-23T13:10:00-05:00

New York - and San Francisco, London, Paris and other cities where cost of living has skyrocketed - are no longer places where you go to be someone. They are places you live when you are born having arrived. They are, as journalist Simon Kuper puts it, "the vast gated communities where the one percent reproduces itself".

Creativity is rejected: Teachers and bosses don’t value out-of-the-box thinking

2013-12-12T20:48:00-05:00

This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise. “We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Editor's Picks #338

2013-10-22T11:45:00-04:00

Michael Abrahamson currently a doctoral student in Architecture History and Theory at the University of Michigan provided a review of "Air Rights" – an exhibition by the Drone Research Lab (DRL) at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning...Responding either to the author or to projects found in the exhibition (perhaps both?), Darkman criticized "The BLDGBLOG type inquiry walks a fine line between futurism and self-indulgance"

For the latest edition of the In Focus series, dedicated to profiling the photographers who help make the work of architects look that much better, Archinect spoke with Stockholm-based English photographer Robin Hayes.

Plus, Michael Abrahamson currently a doctoral student in Architecture History and Theory at the University of Michigan provided a review of "Air Rights" – an exhibition by the Drone Research Lab (DRL) at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Therein he explains "The exhibit seems to argue that the site of misbehavior and appropriation is shifting from the tagged surfaces of graffiti to aberrant spatial practices of collection and documentation...The show is a mixed bag, displaying everything from a metaphoric play on US intelligence procedures to a pragmatic consumer drone kit. Notably absent is any attempt at using drones for the fabrication of habitable spaces".

Responding either to the author or to projects found in the exhibition (per...

Denise Scott Brown and the myth of individual creativity

2013-10-17T21:43:00-04:00

Modern architecture, despite breaking with the past stylistically, nonetheless maintains this image of the gifted architect as a lone autonomous genius who overcomes gravity and prevails over his client [...] Rather than an inner activity done in solitude, it has been found that people often discover their thoughts and ideas through interactions with others [...] The centrality of collaboration in architecture is often overlooked in a culture celebrating and branding “starchitects.”

Referring to recent statistics concerning women in architectural practice and the Denise Scott Brown Pritzker controversy, architect Esther Sperber calls for an overhaul of how we think about creativity and authorship in architecture. Her piece for Lilith, "Revising Our Ideas about Collective Inspiration", argues that what is perceived as "creative genius" relies on cultural and social affirmation, and is therefore a necessarily collective act.

Endorsing D.S.B.'s demand that the architecture community "salute the notion of joint creativity", Sperber's piece recognizes issues of gender inequality within the practice, but is more concerned with the whole notion of individual intellectual ownership -- creativity just doesn't work this way, and prestigious awards shouldn't either.

As creative industries adapt "orchestrated serendipity" strategies to capitalize on collaborative processes, the presumption that intellectual production belongs to any one individual dissolves. Sperber'...

LEGO® Architecture Studio now in stores

2013-08-02T12:47:00-04:00

You can never be too old to play with LEGOs. Yesterday, the beloved brand released its latest series, LEGO Architecture Studio.

Endorsed by REX architecture, Sou Fujimoto Architects, SOM, MAD Architects, Tham & Videgård Arkitekter, and Safdie Architects, the set includes a guidebook written in collaboration with leading architects and edited by Christopher Turner. Click here for a preview (PDF).

Every toolkit includes over 1,200 monochromatic LEGO bricks, slopes, planes, and more that let you learn the fundamentals of design in a LEGO context. And instead of the usual step-by-step manual, the kit has a 272-page guidebook full of tips, techniques, inspiration, and even intuitive exercises to really get your creativity flowing.

At $150 a set, the price is pretty steep. But in comparison to actual building costs and having complete freedom with your project? It's probably worth it.

Go Ahead, Have a Beer at the Office

2012-04-30T16:43:00-04:00

New psychological research shows that mild intoxication can actually boost creative problem solving.

Are you bummed that it's Monday again? New research may turn your frown upside down, because it looks like you now have an excuse to get a little buzz on at work, in the name of creativity.