The Origin of Ideas

When was the last time you had an idea? Was it a good one? Where did it come from? In a world relying on progress through ideas, they are a very ethereal subject matter.

By Sebastian Stripp

About a year ago our theme was ‘Senses’. Many articles were written about the physical sensations of space. How we feel, smell and hear spaces as well as see them. In this article I will touch upon this as I make a philosophical enquiry about, where ideas originate from.

Ideas are very intangible, and regardless of whether you look to scientists, architects or philosophers, ideas just appear all the more elusive. Some philosophers would argue ideas are just sensations like touch and smell, while other creative souls argue that one does not know what one thinks until it has been written down. In which case the idea is no longer as intangible, but does that make it less of an idea? One thing is for sure, you need knowledge and experience to generate ideas.

The two philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant were in close agreement that all of our knowledge comes from our senses, or arises out of our sensual experiences as Kant reformulated it. This is the empiricist philosophical view. Therefore, a more phenomenological architectural approach should be taken, as there is much more to architecture than visual appearance. Use all of your five or six senses! Do you remember the smell of your childhood home, the taste of the city, the sound of the café or the emotions associated with a certain place? You didn’t see any of these. Yet, we travel great distances to see buildings. I have never met anyone, who just went to smell Ronchamp or hear Tadao Ando’s concrete echoes, and only a few have gone to Finland to feel Aalto’s handrails. There is much more to architecture than meets the eye, and if we are to acquire new ideas, we must expand our brains. Do things we haven’t done before, go places we haven’t been and understand what we do not know. We must see beyond.

We often think art, design and architecture are special, separated from the likes of classic science, and, yes, we have been keeping them apart for a long time. However, the mathematician, physicists and doctor are still faced with creative issues, though they have many standard procedures. But we also have the Building Regulations and standard off-the-shelf ways of dealing with certain problems. Likewise, scientists have to think out of the box to come up with new testable hypotheses, they cannot just copy and paste, otherwise nothing new will come of it – just like architecture. What we do is very much problem solving of built space. There are all these factors, variables and influences we try to boil down to a single answer: our final project. Einstein said that to reach the fundamental laws of the universe; ‘only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience’ can guide us. I believe the exact same is true for architecture.

Early on in this article I said our ideas originate from our senses and experiences, but like any response in philosophy, this actually raises more questions than it answers! Firstly, another philosopher, René Descartes, questions the origins of our fundamental ideas such as pain, colour and sound, which precede our senses and experience. Secondly, we sometimes seem to get ideas, which have nothing to do with anything we have ever experienced. These ideas arise out of nowhere, thin air. They are truly original, unique and our own. Or are they? Is it actually possible to be original?

Before the 16th century people were said to have a genius instead of being a genius. People produced work or ideas of supernatural origins and this was the way to explain it. However, we all have a genius inside; our brain. Amazingly complex and not yet fully understood, we simply need to let it unfold unrestrictedly. The reason ideas seem to come from supernatural places or other dimensions can be explained by the concept of emergence. This is best illustrated with some chemistry; oxygen and hydrogen are both gases, but when combined under the right conditions, our most vital liquid emerges; water. Similarly, simple ideas combine in our minds to create, occasionally, ground-breaking new buildings. For instance, move all the services and circulation to the outside and make a massive piazza in front of the building; Centre Pompidou, Paris by Piano and Rogers. The thermal properties of earth and a ridge in a hill for access; the Edgeland House in Texas by Bercy Chen Studio. Or, a private entrance and a private garden for each individual combined with a massive, multi-storey housing development; Alexandra Road Estate, London by Neave Brown.

We may want to create something new and fancy, we may even try and force it. Nevertheless, I think we should pay close attention to the words of Hella Jongerius & Louis Schouwenberg’s manifesto Beyond the New; ‘It is absurd and arrogant to begin the design process with an empty piece of paper. Cultural and historical awareness are woven into the DNA of any worthwhile product. Otherwise the designer is merely embracing newness for its own sake – an empty shell, which requires overblown rhetoric to fill it with meaning. There is value in continually re-examining what already exists, delving into the archives, poring over the classics. What untapped potential do the materials, colours, functions and forms, still hold.’ We have to keep in mind that nothing is perfect, therefore, you can always improve on it. Our generation, like the ones before us, stands on the shoulders of giants and we should be careful not to fall from such a great height, though sometimes you must take a leap of faith.