The Rethinking of Ontological and Ethical Aspects of Creativity: the Creative Value of Precedent-Based Architecture

Creativity is a concept that is counted nowadays as a person’s most valuable characteristics. It is highly important in the literature of architectural education and the profession. Its normative place in architectural design makes it an essential subject of study. The “meaning” of this concept is put into question in this paper due to its source of normative value. The research method is a theoretical debate based on an interpretive strategy in conjunction with rational reasoning and conceptual modeling. A three-dimensional model is introduced to present all logical aspects of a comparative study of creativity within modern and traditional philosophical stances. In the two other dimensions, the “ontological” and “ethical” aspects of creativity are studied, as well as the “precedent-based” vs. “non-precedent-based” architecture. The ontological study refuted, or at least, questioned the claim that there is some phenomenon as creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing), which is valid in both traditional as well as modern stances. Therefore, creativity always incorporates prior knowledge, with the difference lying in the tacit or explicit representation of the source of creativity. This could also be related to the contextual or non-contextual source of inspiration. This distinction is investigated in traditional and modern structures of the Shrine of Hazrat-e Ma‘sumeh. Lastly, the ethical value of the deductive and inductive nature of architectural creation is discussed with reference to modern as well as Islamic points of view. It is concluded that there is no ontological difference in traditional or modern thinking regarding creative activity and that the point of departure pertains to the ethical aspects, making either explicit or tacit source of creativity preferable. In this paper, it is shown that from the Islamic stance, explicit precedents are considerably valued over tacit precedents.