Creativity as commonplace

According to Abercrombie, how the architect resolves the conflicting demands on a project ‘remains a mystery of the creative mind’. ¹ In the art of architecture there is ‘something that evades analysis, something that touches us in the most secret parts of our minds, something not only beyond utility but also beyond all that is rational and everyday’. ² The traditions of architectural modernism have done little to dispel the mysteries of creativity. For Le Corbusier, ‘Art is this pure creation of the spirit which shows us, at certain heights, the summit of the creation to which man is capable of attaining’, ³ and exercises a ‘chosen few’. ⁴ For Louis Kahn, ‘architecture is no science, and planning is no science’. There is a place for scientific method, ‘but it is a matter of feeling, it is a matter of knowing the whole’. ⁵ The key is inspiration: ‘Can anyone define inspiration? … It comes out of the essence soul which only has one surge, one force, one energy.’ ⁶