Creativity can result in the creation of images and ideas. The mechanism of creativity and idea production does not differ across different disciplines as much as the outer form of the products. Architectural discipline is based on four pillars: idea production, creative processing of the idea, representational techniques and research methods (technology). These four principles exist in other arts too, but the technical aspects of architecture are very elaborate. From ancient times architects were known to have interest and engage in different arts such as painting, sculpture, stage design, industrial design, photography, etc. The technical side of various art forms differ, yet architecture has this in common with other arts that it creates ideas. What was said about idea was in the general sense of the term yet idea in the specific sense is more of a new way of thinking, something similar to technical and scientific inventions. At the point of its emergence, an idea is devoid of aesthetic qualities. It is only the expression of a new system. It is in the processing phase that the great architectural ideas are first discovered and then invented. This is what Le Corbusier called the process of ‘observation’, ‘imagination’ and ‘invention’. The ideas of ‘continuous surface’ in architecture (applied by architects such as Koolhaas, van Berkel and Moussavi) tries to discover one quality of surfaces first and then creating new architectural works on that basis. Although the process of producing idea is known today, the actual production of a idea is a very complicated process. Man can carry out properly what he knows well. Yet, it is easier to produce the most sophisticated industrial products than to invent something new. This is because producing a idea is nothing less than doing what man does not already know about. The author believes that the most important power of man is to perform tasks that he does not have enough knowledge about. Animals and the so-called intelligent machines do fascinating things that man cannot but they perform what they know about or are programmed for. Once I saw in a scientific exhibition the capsule that had taken the first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, to outer space and returned him safe and sound: a rusty metal ball with a diameter slightly more than two meters and an opening similar to that of a washing machine. If this was put on back of a truck, nobody would be willing to even do a quick trip with it to the next supermarket. In 1961, when the shuttle was launched, it was only three-and-a-half years since the first outer space device was tested and more than half of the previous endeavours had failed. At that time, physicians had could not predict the possible human reactions to the zero gravity. The computer of the navigation station was weaker than a portable tablet PC today and the radars used were very primitive. Today, one can judge that the knowledge of the time was far from sufficient for sending man to space. Despite several
problems and the failure of some of the provisioned devices, Gagarin’s mission was successful. The same is the case with ideas: Man moves ahead of his knowledge and this is what pushes arts and sciences forward. Jules Verne wrote his science fiction book, A Trip from the Earth to the Moon, in 1865, that is, more than a century before man set foot upon the moon. Through creating ideas, man steps into unknown territories of which he has no previous experience. ‘Idea’ comes before the materialization of innovations in scientific and artistic fields.
Idea and Innovation Today architecture is about new ideas. The same is true with regards to physics, mathematics, painting and literature. Constructing a good and useful building alone does not advance architecture as a discipline. People need new spaces that surprise them, new spaces which push forward the boundaries of architecture and create novel perspectives in this familiar world. Architects supply people with new ways of living within built spaces. Today the definition of house is not static and the notion of habitat and consequently the form of housing is constantly changing. A new idea forms when the architect does not hold the images and models stored in his memory before him while designing. Although every thought is formed according to what exists in the memory, the pure architectural idea is created by going beyond the example of the past. Each architectural oeuvre is a critique of the dominant architecture of the time and distances itself from subjective images and pre-suppositions. A idea which is not novel is not a idea at all. It would resemble a repetition of an innovation or a copy of a painting and is thus worthless. It is natural that no architecture is wholly original yet an original architectural work has to rely on new ideas or show innovation in the way it applies a known idea. For the whole and the particular parts of each architectural work there are ready-made solutions and examples available; the easiest and usually the most incorrect thing to do would be to use these available solutions. An architect always looks for new ways of connecting form to content. Interpreting the content is also the task of the architect and goes well beyond the pre- assumptions of the project. The conditions of each project is also different. Therefore, the task of the architect could be regarded as turning the banal into the extraordinary. This would not mean aiming at something theatrical rather designing works which could bring about a considerable change in the structure of the space or in architectural elements.