Architect's self-readiness for strengthening creative rationality and its implementation in design learning for architecture as livable space

¹ Department of Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Planning, Universitas Trisakti, Jakarta, Indonesia
² School of Architecture, Planning, and Policy Development, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract

This research departs from the desire to gain learning from the rationality in designing of architects who have produced extraordinary creative works. Through a qualitative study of the designing practice by research-participant architects, the researcher describes the architect's mental readiness to strengthen his rationality in designing. This research uses multiple case studies with case units of mental processes of designing architects at the conceptual design stage, involving 16 research-participant architects. The main data were explored through in-depth retrospective interviews, analyzed using qualitative content analysis techniques. Research reveals that to strengthen their rationality in designing, architects build cognitive and psychological readiness. Cognitive readiness contributed dominantly, including readiness for complex thinking, alternative thinking and utilizing knowledge in memory. This readiness is built utilizing internal conditions formed from experience, education, and learning from the environment. The implementation of these findings in architectural design learning leads to start learning by conditioning students to be ready to use ratio in designing. Readiness is built by taking advantage of personal internal conditions so that the results are very diverse. Learning to design architecture must be designed inclusively to reach this diversity. Design assignments are required to be very open, which allows each student to develop the most suitable project to develop and express his potential to the fullest. This kind of task model has not been applied to every level of learning in our architectural education system.