Architecture in Words: Inspiration, Time & Creativity
The education process for both a master’s degree in architecture and in fine arts for creative writing follow—this may surprise many architects—the same model: the professor, peer students, creative and technical investigations, creation, and critique. The cycle occurs repeatedly with the purpose of pushing the student’s mind, capabilities, creativity, and survival skills. Often the sequence is successful, until the student is catapulted into the real world of designing buildings or getting published. Here, as many seasoned leaders in either field know, the opportunities for being creative and being a creative writer diminish. While writers might not need to learn the art of architecture, architects need to learn how to write creatively.
Take Time to Be Creative
The age-old conundrum of finding creative time affects more than architects. Many articles seek to help all business leaders cultivate creative practices including, “Creativity Under the Gun” published in the Harvard Review, which cites time pressure as a primary reason for a lack of creative agency. A piece by Clutch CEO and Founder, Lysa Miller, includes “six strategies for growing as a creative leader.” Number 5 is, “Take time to be creative.” These two ideas present a large, but not insurmountable, challenge for creative endeavors. TheHarvard Review article, states “Psychologists have long believed that creativity results from the formation of a large number of associations in the mind, followed by the selection of associations that may be particularly interesting and useful.” That takes time. And devotion. To turn that time into writing ideas on architecture takes more. It takes dedicating time to page through a few of the best architecture books for inspiring creativity and then to allow the mind to do its magic.
Write and Learn Creative Centers
Places designed for creative escape exist. The American Academy in Rome, the Leighton Artist Colony in Banff, and the Center of Creative Leadership provide the serenity and inspiration that allow for associations of the mind to build and the processing necessary for turning ideas into words to happen. For those less inclined toward the investment and travel these programs require, two of the best architecture books—and books in general—that provide a creative journey are the volumes of Emilio Ambasz, the The Poetics of the Pragmaticand the harder to find Inventions. The multidisciplinary Ambasz has always been fearless in blurring the boundaries of architecture, landscape, technology, and form. His work presents architect and writer alike with visual creative “prompts.” Take a creative journey by opening any page containing an image in either of book and be confronted with conformity-bending aspiration. The models and renderings of his work exemplify how “the formation of a large number of associations in the mind” spark imagination. Consider Ambasz’s at Residence-au-Lac Lugano, Switzerland, where sky, mountain, the blue air of night, and, technically, carpeting ask, what is this space, what is it like to pass through here, and what experiences emerge from that process?
It’s simple to web search “creative writing prompts” and find hundreds of ideas to kick-start writing about an architectural project. Find your own best architecture book to inspire your mind. Allow time to open it and find an image worth lingering over—one that inspires you. Amid the time crush of the work week, return to that image several times. Let it percolate in your subconscious. Then find time alone, or with noise canceling headphones, to write about your work keeping that image front and center. Free yourself from judgement and simply write. Exactly as in the process of architecture, writing takes time, iteration, editing, and revision. The trick is to prioritize the process as is done for design. Without words to go with your work, it’s difficult to spread the meaning and value of all that is created under the pressure of every day. Architects need to write. Nonarchitects need your words to gain access into the creativity that fueled it.
