Wednesday, July 20, 2016

All that is good and holy: the Architect!

George definitely thought they were the best thing to be.


Either 99% Invisible agrees or it is simply reporting on a study from the fifties that considered architects as exemplars of both the Artistic and Scientific fields.
...in the early 1950s, the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) at the University of California, Berkeley began developing new and different ways to analyze personalities. The scientists at IPAR attempted what many thought was impossible: to study creativity in a methodical and scientific way, working to determine what specific personality traits make certain people creative.
...
Researchers saw architects as people working at a crossroads of creative disciplines, a combination of analytic and artistic creativity. As professionals, architects had to be savvy as engineers and businessmen; as aesthetes, they also acted as designers and artists.
The architects were given questions both serious and whimsical. One was, "If man had developed a third arm, where might this arm be best attached?” More serious questions were devoted to integrity or artistic freedom.  They were also asked to design mosaics and three examples are given at the link. One is exclusively grey - that's a valid choice but not one my tastes consider creative.

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