Creativity and Use of Physical Models in Architectural Design

The paper is taking up the subject of architectural models in the context of creativity theory and design teaching methods in three parts. In the first part the author is reviewing creativity theories of Donald W. MacKinnon and Edward de Bono and looking for relations and parallels between work on model and creativity. The architectural model as a tool or medium will be compared with elements of theory of creativity and ideas production. In the second part some experiences from world leading architectural practices are surveyed in the attempt to answer the question why scale model is still crucial to the creative process of practices such as OMA, MVRDV and Neutelings Riedijk. The third part presents the authors' own observations from the didactic process in which work on model was central. Conclusions will be drawn to complement and summarize the paper.