ABSTRACT
When I stop to think about the source and nature of architectural innovation I see a spectrum. At one extreme there is the profound innovation of thought in such people as Antonio Gaudí or Buckminster Fuller, whose approaches were based on fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. At the other end there is the detailed and rigorous innovation that, through research and small steps of progress, makes possible new, exciting projects like Mannheim Bundesgartenshau or the Great Court at the British Museum. To some extent conceptual innovation has been the domain of architects and detailed innovation that of engineers, but the picture is blurred and bigger leaps are made by people who do not fit easily into any such definitions.
