Contemporary ideals of architectural education - educating creativity

Abstract

This Master's Thesis discusses the influence of architectural education on shaping the creativity of an architect. According to the Finnish architectural education history the original intent has been to produce architects who would serve the industry as it is - by providing it with assistants who could do basic outlines and draw accurate copies. Students had little possibility to influence the development of architecture as the intentions of the education were not to amplify the personal creativity of the architects to be. Yet, ever since architects separated their industry from the building contractors', creativity in particular has been the argument used to differentiate the two.

In order to understand how creativity is treated, affected and developed through architectural education in our country, seven architects were interviewed for this Master's Thesis (Adlercreutz G., Ahlava A., Finne C., Lindgren T., Meikop I., Munsterhjelm L., Yanar A.), and one creativity-consultant (Wasenius R.). The aim was to get a broad spread of age, gender, occupation and experience.

Within architectural education the defining elements in developing creativity of the future architect are: The relation to other industries, the pedagogy of the education, the balance between the student's work and private life, work methods, and the evaluating tradition. If these elements are not in harmony the learning process may be incomplete, or in the worst case have a negative impact on the creativity of the student.

The question of attitudes is a key to education: All time spent dwelling on failures, shortcomings etc. distract from time that could be spent on developing, strengthening and refining the unique strengths of the student. Since most young people can not yet separate self-confidence (what we do) from self-esteem (who we are) critique is often perceived negatively, as one is indirectly judged for what one is, based on what one does. Therefore it would be vitally important to use uplifting expressions in all situations.

The question of creativity concerns much bigger perspectives than our architectural education. We are in the middle of a transition period - globalisation, unsolved questions regarding environment, resource-handling and -distribution etc. This calls for creative solutions in networks, collaboration and global perspectives. Creativity is an economic force that increases the resources with which we may do well in the world. Architecture needs to build a better world.

What we do and learn in school shapes us for the rest of our life. This is an enormous responsibility, but also an immense opportunity for the school: To teach students how to teach themselves, encourage and make them aware of their own strengths, and show how versatile their creative potential is. That kind of knowledge gives creativity significance and benefits society on every level.

The intention of this Master's Thesis has been to inspire, stimulate and ignite thoughts - to induce a positive discussion about our architectural education and the role of creativity in our industry. We now have an extraordinary opportunity to be global originators and do something pioneering. Our school is full of potential: Highly qualified professors and teacher, and students bubbling with creative energy. The task of architectural education is to channel all this marvellous potential in a constructive way, thus ensuring that the architect has the best qualifications for maximising his/her creative ability.