ABSTRACT
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
