Teaching creativity in self-organizing studio network: implications for architectural education

Design education is traditionally developed for those related to creative arts such as artists, art object designers or professionals who search for new ideas in their designs. It is considered as a domain to awaken “creativity”. Creativity is discussed as a function of human brain and mostly interpreted in its psychological context. This paper discusses the social characteristics of an education medium for creativity in terms of a network theory. This model of design education, in which the studio group is regarded as a network, proposes that by setting up the primary underlying framework, students ultimately reach a common ground through their individual learning experiences that lead to a wide range of design variations. Consequently, this open-ended process helps enhance the students‟ independent problem-solving and innovative thinking skills. “Awareness”, “information exchange”, “role defining”, “continuous interaction” are related concepts in such a self-regulating interactive process of searching for creative solutions. The process will be studied under the light of recent discoveries on brain that are connected to the network theory. These ideas will be presented and illustrated through a case study of freshman design exercise implemented at Okan University Department of Architecture, Istanbul, Turkey. This learner-centered pedagogical framework can contribute to a theory of learning that can capture and convey the essential features of a metacognitive environment