Creativity by Design

By Katherine Gluckselig, Hanna Negami, Rebecca Milne, and Bob Condia

Where are people most creative? An exploration of famous creative workspaces finds studios, workshops, and other environments that are as unique as the personalities who inhabited them. The author E. B. White is said to have written most of Charlotte’s Web in a simple boathouse with a view of the water. Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist who shattered barriers in the art world, worked in a light-filled studio adorned with artifacts representing her relationships and personal history. A number of world-changing business ideas came to life in garages (Disney, Amazon, Dyson) and dorm rooms (Facebook, Google, Yahoo!), while coffee shops are the venue of choice for authors J. K. Rowling and Malcolm Gladwell. What, if anything, do these spaces have in common? Is there a connection between one’s immediate physical environment and their ability, or inclination, to think creatively?

Creativity is often characterized as an elusive or even mystical construct. Rigorously studied across different fields, it has been described as a process, an insight, a phenomenon, a mindset, and a skill. The Hungarian-American psychologist and researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines creativity as “any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one.”1 A simpler definition points to ideas that are both novel and useful to a particular situation.2

Psychological research has parsed creativity, in all its complexity, into distinct types, phases, and measures. One model, developed by Dr. James C. Kaufman and Dr. Ronald Beghetto, describes four types of creativity ranging in scale from “mini-c,” or personal creativity, to “Big-C,” the genius-level breakthroughs that leave a mark on the world.3 As a process, creativity is commonly understood as occurring in stages labeled as some variation of Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification.4 Viewed as a quantifiable skill, creativity is often measured by creative output (i.e. the quantity or quality of creative solutions produced) or creative potential (having to do with personality, creative thought, and behavior).5

Creativity is paramount in a world where knowledge work and technological innovation are among the driving forces of economic growth. The World Economic Forum predicts that creativity will be a top desired skill in the workplace by 2025.6 According to LinkedIn, creativity was already the most in-demand quality among job search applicants in 2020.7 With the rise of AI and machine automation, it is perhaps no surprise that creativity — a distinctively human skill — ranks high on the list of qualities that employers are looking for. Yet although creativity has been studied and dissected into distinct types, considerable resources are invested in cultivating creativity as a unitary construct, without knowing what the evidence-based strategies might be to support it.

The idea of designing for creativity is nothing new to architecture, but the strategies designers employ are largely based on professional observations and other anecdotal evidence. Particularly in corporate environments, many clients seek to tip the scales in favor of creativity. Some offices, such as those at Google, are notorious for their outlandishly playful interiors, but the trend extends far beyond tech; with an estimated one billion knowledge workers globally, creative workspaces are in-demand across a broad range of industries and professions. So, what are the characteristics of a creative environment?

In his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi devotes a chapter to creative surroundings. Csikszentmihalyi posits that “surroundings can influence creativity in different ways, in part depending on the stage of the process in which a person is involved.” The preparation phase, he suggests, may benefit from “an ordered, familiar environment” that enables deep focus. Moving into the incubation stage, “novel stimuli” offer a welcome distraction, allowing the subconscious mind to wander and find connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. Once an insight is reached, a familiar and distraction-free environment supports “evaluation and elaboration.”8

Researchers have explored the discrete effects of the built environment on creativity. For instance, in a 2013 study, researchers Anna Steidle and Lioba Werth found that dim lighting reduced inhibition and elicited experimental behavior, providing a feeling of “freedom from constraints.”9 Other researchers have asked managers to predict how creative they would be in different types of environments; this work found that offices that have more plants, cooler colors, bright lighting, lower visual complexity, and an information source (e.g., a computer) are associated with greater predicted creativity.10

Beyond these few findings, however, not much is well understood about creativity and the built environment—what aspects of the physical environment can support or hinder different stages of the creative process, and for whom? Some research suggests that the answers might depend on whether the creative work is independent or collaborative.11 Does the relationship between architectural design and creativity differ based on personality?

Our interdisciplinary team—with backgrounds in design strategy, psychology, and architecture—worked together to explore these questions. Our background in investigating the role of architecture in creativity began with an earlier project on spatial ambiguity, which we posited may prime innovative thinking by presenting fewer constraints when interacting with a space.12 To explore creativity in the workplace, we expanded on this initial research with a pilot study funded by ONE Workplace’s ONEder Grant.

To understand what kinds of environments might best support different phases of creativity, including the proverbial “aha” moments, we employed an Experience Sampling Method (ESM) in which participants are prompted multiple times a day to complete a survey. Studies using ESM allow researchers to sample people’s experiences in the moment, rather than recalling past experiences from a temporal and physical distance. The participants who made up our initial sample were seventeen creative professionals at ONE Workplace, all of whom designated their work as being in architecture/design. Employees who expressed interest in participating were sent a survey file and a link to a smartphone app. Participants loaded our survey file onto the app, which launched a schedule of two surveys a day for a week (excluding weekends) as they were pursuing creative tasks at work. Every time the app pinged them to complete a survey, each employee rated aspects of their environment (“This room looks: Impersonal – Personal” on a sliding scale); aspects of their creativity (“I had a moment of insight: Not at all – Extremely”); their posture (“Describe your posture: Closed – Open”); and their mood (“How do you feel right now? Very bad – Very good”).

We found that “homey” environments were significantly associated with feelings of inspiration, illumination, and verification. Although homey may not sound like a scientific term, it is in fact based in scientific research on psychological responses to the built environment and can be briefly defined as environments that feel cozy, natural, and personal.13 Our analyses showed no other significant relationships between the environment and creativity, including other phases of the creative process, or between creativity and posture or creativity and mood.

It was interesting to run our study at the height of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 when many employees were working remotely. Our participants were at home (as opposed to the office, outside, or somewhere else) when taking a survey 78% of the time. Will we find that hominess has a similar effect outside the home when we sample more participants working from offices, cafes, and co-working spaces?

Our findings, limited as they were due to the Omicron wave, raise important questions at a time when many businesses are moving to more permanent hybrid-work models. There’s been much investment in making “creative spaces” at the office, but are people more creative when they are at home? In Creativity, Csikszentmihalyi writes, “We need a supportive symbolic ecology in the home so that we can feel safe, drop our defenses, and go on with the tasks of life. And to the extent that the symbols of the home represent essential traits and values of the self, they help us be more unique, more creative.”14 He suggests it is the personal cues that reflect back who we are and what we value that facilitate creativity. Indeed, the data from our preliminary study supports this idea — when we looked at individual relationships between creativity and the factors that make up “hominess” (a sense of being at home, a natural vibe, and a personal touch), we found more personal environments were associated with greater feelings of inspiration. Given this finding, are the less personalized, free-address office seating models that more businesses are turning to hindering creativity?

If we replicate our findings with a bigger, more diverse sample, what would that mean for office design? What aspects of “hominess” should we bring into work environments? Csikszentmihalyi suggests that modest, less stimulating environments are best for the preparation or research phase of creativity.15 Yet many open-concept offices are rife with visual and auditory distractions, where the capacity for deep focus without distraction is hindered. When businesses construct playful, innovative offices to promote creative work, are they promoting one part of the creative process at the expense of others? We hope to answer these questions by continuing our work to map out creativity in the built environment, test our intuitions about innovative workplace design, and inform design strategies to facilitate creative thinking.

Professional Spotlight

What does our research mean for the profession of architecture? A study of creativity in architects argues that they effectively balance an “inner drive to self-expression with the motivation to externalize and engage with the world, constraints and all.”16 What is the place of such a balanced mind? As architects, how can the spaces we design help others to express themselves and engage with the world? Breaking down the creative process into distinct types and phases, and studying how design affects these processes, and for whom, is critical to fully understand the effect of design on creativity and produce evidence-based strategies.

Katie Gluckselig, design strategist, Hanna Negami, data strategist, and Rebecca Milne, director of Design Strategy, are members of Design Strategy at Perkins Eastman, a multidisciplinary team that applies research and design thinking to create and enrich meaningful, human-centered spaces across all the firm’s practice areas. Bob Condia, FAIA, is a Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design and partner at Condia+Ornelas Architects, Manhattan, Kansas.

Citations

1.          Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), 28.

2.          Beth A. Hennessey and Teresa M. Amabile, “Creativity,” Annual Review of Psychology 61, no. 1 (2010): 569–98, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100416.

3.          James C. Kaufman and Ronald A. Beghetto, “Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity,” Review of General Psychology 13, no. 1 (2009): 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013688.

4.          Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought (London: J. Cape, 1926), 79–107.

5.          Daniela Villani and Alessandro Antonietti. “Measurement of Creativity,” in Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ed. Elias G. Carayannis (New York, NY: Springer, 2013), 1234–38, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3858-8_377.

6.          Kate Whiting, “These Are the Top 10 Job Skills of Tomorrow—And How Long it Takes to Learn Them,” World Economic Forum, October 21, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/top-10-work-skills-of-tomorrow-how-long-it-takes-to-learn-them/.

7.          Bruce M. Anderson, “The Most In-Demand Hard and Soft Skills of 2020,” LinkedIn Talent Blog, LinkedIn, January 9, 2020, https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/linkedin-most-in-demand-hard-and-soft-skills.

8.          Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity, 145-146.

9.          Anna Steidle and Lioba Werth, “Freedom from Constraints: Darkness and Dim Illumination Promote Creativity,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 35, (2013): 67–80, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.05.003.

10.        Canan Ceylan, Jan Dul, and Serpil Aytac, “Can the Office Environment Stimulate a Manager’s Creativity?” Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing 18, no. 6 (2008): 589–602, https://doi.org/10.1002/hfm.20128.

11.        Katja Thoring, Pieter Desmet, and Petra Badke-Schaub, “Creative Environments for Design Education and Practice: A Typology of Creative Spaces,” Design Studies 56, (2018): 54–83, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2018.02.001; Donatella De Paoli, Erika Sauer, and Arja Ropo, “The Spatial Context of Organizations: A Critique of ‘Creative Workspaces,’” Journal of Management & Organization 25, no. 2 (2019): 331–52, doi:10.1017/jmo.2017.46.

12.        Bob Condia, Hanna Negami, Katherine Gluckselig, and Rebecca Milne, “The Effect of Spatial Ambiguity on Creative Thinking,” Journal of Science-Informed Design, (2021), https://theccd.org/article/106/the-effect-of-spatial-ambiguity-on-creative-thinking/.

13.        Alexander Coburn, Oshin Vartanian, Yoed N. Kenett, Marcos Nadal, Franziska Hartung, Gregor Hayn-Leichsenring, Gorka Navarrete, José L. González-Mora, and Anjan Chatterjee, “Psychological and Neural Responses to Architectural Interiors,” Cortex 126 (2020): 217–241, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.01.009.

14.        Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity, 142.

15.        Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity, 139.

16.        Pierluigi Serraino, The Creative Architect: Inside the great midcentury personality study (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 2016), 29.