Airborn ideas

Le Corbusier's urbanistic ambitions, from Ville Contemporaine and Plan Voisin (Paris) to Plan Obus (Algiers) and the Rio plan (Brazil),  have many references, both explicit and implicit (as he had a habit of covering up his sources). Ville Contemporaine (contemporary city, 1922), a city designed for a population of 3 million, was an attempt at combining the garden city idea with the more urban type of the apartment block (where Chicago inspired skyscrapers made up the core of the city), whereas Plan Voisin, exhibited in 1925, made references to the French motor industry (Voisin car manufacturer sponsered the plan). Plan Voisin was followed up by Ville Radieuse (radient city, 1930) - a linear city divided into zones. As to the aesthetic, economic and social aspects of Corbusier's urbanism, the plans are based on an established catalogue of building types which represents the ideal city of big business and of centralised state control. In contrast, his proposals for Rio de Janeiro (1929) and Algiers (1932) were more flexible due to differences in the landscapes, that is to say, the new urbanism planned for flat topography, such as Paris, was too rigid and unsuitable for the steep coasts of Rio and Algiers. Interestingly, Corbusier's plans for South America and North Africa were inspired by his view of the coastline from above (he viewed both cities by airplane) providing him with ideas for a new urban aesthetic and guidelines for master planning. He wrote: 'A flight in a plane is a drama with a message - a philosophy ...  But once he [the flier] is down on the ground again, his aims and intentions will have achieved a new dimension'. Perhaps the most ironic outcome of Corbusier's urbanistic ambitions is that while none of his visionary schemes were realised his radical ideas have been hugely influential in the designing and building of cities worldwide and, in societies that still regard the motor car and tower blocks as signs of progress, till this day.

Ways of ideating

The book Ways of Seeing by John Berger (1926-2017) was published fifty years ago and was based on the BBC television series with the same name. In the book, Berger expounds on the way we view art (paintings, photographs, films, or any other representation that humans can construct), encouraging us to flex our image-reading skills. A key message of the book is 'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak ... But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.' This state of flux characterises design ideation too. That is to say, the relation between visual and verbal language, between the image and the word, as in the popular phrase "a picture says more than a thousand words". Or, as expressed by the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818-83) who wrote: "The drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book". Yet visual and verbal languages have been intertwined for centuries, for example, medieval illuminated manuscripts, with their elaborate illustrations. Or, say, the Cubists, such as Braque and Picasso, who incorporated text into their artwork.

Small group ideation

To challenge individualist conceptions of creativity to argue that social interaction, communication, and collaboration are key elements in creative thought and practice. In this vein, Tyler Cowen, writing in Bloomberg Opinion suggests that "When working on any kind of problem, task or question embed yourself in a small group of peers with braodly similar concerns". This is because, Cowen continues, "The group will give you ideas, feedback and help keep you focused on the issue at hand. The personalities and framings of the other group members will make the issue seem more vivid. After all, there are few problems you are better off facing alone".  Cowen's piece of advice stems from what has been dubbed in Silicon Valley  "the small group theory". For a second near-universal piece of advice, Cowen suggests: "Get a mentor". That is, someone who has more knowledge, general or special, and experience than yourself. The advantage of a mentor,, says Cowen,is that "Aside from providing teaching and advice, the mentor, like the small group, helps make an issue or idea more vivid: A living, breathing exemplar of success stands before you. The mentor makes a discipline feel more real and the prospect of success more realistic". In short, Cowen's advice seems worth trying. After all, ideators must always be open-minded in their approach to idea generation and communication. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-07/the-only-two-pieces-of-advice-you-ll-ever-need?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Delivering design through sketching

"To sketch is a mental exercise", says Santiago Calatrava, architect, sculptor and painter as well as structural engineer.. "It's a mental exercise that goes directly fromy our mind into your hand in a very spontaneous way. And probably one of the most effcient ways to capture the idea and the vision you have in your mind. And also to analyse it, to investigate, to let it change and transform.The drawings, in the beginning may be very imprecise but with time they become more and more precise and, maybe follow much more the intuition. And then with time, they become more and more construction drawings". He continues: "I started in an art school, then went into an architecture school, and then an engineering school. For me, the work as a sculptor proceeds architecture. I was proceeding to find my own language, independent from schools, independent from tendencies, independent from any dictate, thinking that I have the right to say whatever I want to say in my own manner. I like the idea of being an artist but being an artist doesn't mean living in another world but working very hard and thinking and analysing that this what you are doing can have also a higher signification. I mean, simply doing a platform, where people will wait to get a train  can be also a beautiful place. Just that. But, finally, it is a work that you have to deliver, and work that goes over hundreds and hundreds of sketches". And so, given the proliferation of digital design tools, Calatrava proves sketching has not lost it relevance although there are anecdotal reports of a decline in freehand paper-based drawing ability among today's design students. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9qSRbUDWEI

Ideas incubation

Ideas may be percived as "thoughts at speed". Yet producing ideas too fast when trying to resolve a given problem might be detrimental to innovation because some of the best solutions don’t come "all at once" but after a longer incubation period. Therefore, resisting the temptation to find a solution quickly and instead keep searching for more ideas can lead to more innovative and far-reaching solutions.That is, to avoid premature ideas, better then for ideators to arrive at tentative decisions and then intentionally delay action in favor of additional incubation time. For example, the incubation phase was most important to Le Corbusier's creative process in which the elements of a given problem were let to simmer. That is to say, the architect stored the assigned task in his memory while, during the incubation period, he carried out research and documentation necessary to master the elements of the problem. Only then did the idea emerge, become precise and concrete, as evidenced in his notebooks and tracing-paper sketches. Or, in Le Corbusier's own words; a spontaneous birth (after incubation) of the whole work, all at once, and all of a sudden.

Work out ideas

Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021), the American composer and lyricist, had rather romantic views of art: "I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear 'dah-dah-dah-DUM ...  Never occurred to me that art was something worked out". This he came to realise while studying composition at college: "You think it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get it developed and some don't". And so with ideation. Altough the Eureka!, or Aha! moment may be tinted with romantic views of art and creativity - that art, and creativity is somehow a talent. Yet successful ideas have to be worked out. Work out in the sense there's a problem to solve by considering the facts. (Interestingly, Sondheim regarded himself a mathematician by nature). Ideation, then, as problem solving that includes skills (deliberate practice) and ways of seeing (mental representations) that can get developed (can be learned) over time.

The world through rose-tinted glasses

The phrase ‘to see the word through rose-tinted glasses’ means to see things in an overly optimistic, often unrealistic way. But does wearing rose-tinted glasses actually make the world a better place or make people feel happier? And in the wake of COP26, the latest of the United Nations Climate Change Conferences, which serve to assess the progress in dealing with climate change, a process that began in the mid-1990s, would the world look more realistic through green-tinted glasses? If so, given the seriousness of climate change, should ideators form new ideas through seeing the world through a green rather than a rose prism? Yet social science research suggests that viewing our world a bit askew — with rose-tinted glasses — can have postive effects in that it puts us in a better mood, and therefore makes us more receptive to taking in more information, such as on climate issues. But there are risks with the rose-tinted approach, for example, toxic positivity, or delusional thinking. Moreover, seeing things through rose-tinted glasses may have a self-deceptive bias. That is, there’s a difference between perceiving the best account of things and perceiving the true account of things. However, because of this difference, "there are instances in which our beliefs can be wrong but useful", says Phil Corlett, an associate professor in psychiatry at Yale University. In the context of ideation, then, this suggests that ideators have to choose what they belive in to gain control over their ideas, and this whether seeing the world through rose-or green-tinted glasses (or any other colour).