A compelling book unearths the findings from a landmark 1950s study on the era’s design titans that asked: What makes a person creative?
Suppose humans developed a third arm. Where would it grow on the body, and how would it function? Would it have any distinguishing characteristics? What impact would it have on our surroundings and lives? So went one of the questions posed to the 40 preeminent architects who gathered at the University of California, Berkeley for an intensive 1958-1959 study on creativity conducted by the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR). The impressive roster included such titans as Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, George Nelson, and I.M. Pei. Separated into groups of 10, the architects converged in a former fraternity house for three-day sessions of exhaustive testing that included physical and written exercises, questionnaires, group discussions, and in-depth interviews. Led by IPAR director Dr. Donald MacKinnon, the tests were designed to identify the personality traits of the creative individual, a set of variables that was a looming topic in postwar America.
MacKinnon enlisted the help of William Wilson Wurster, Bay Area architect and dean of the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, to select architects for the study. In turn, Wurster assembled a five-person team to name the participants. Of the 64 invited, 40 would make up Group I, the top tier professionals.
Courtesy of Institute of Personality and Social Research, UC Berkeley and The Monacelli Press
MacKinnon enlisted the help of William Wilson Wurster, Bay Area architect and dean of the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, to select architects for the study. In turn, Wurster assembled a five-person team to name the participants. Of the 64 architects invited—who, given the era, were all male and overwhelmingly white—40 agreed to participate. They became Group I, the top-tier professionals. To obtain comparative data, IPAR also studied two more groups of less-established architects: Group II comprised of 43 architects who had spent at least two years working with those in Group I, and Group III was made up of 41 subjects who were randomly chosen from the 1955 National Directory of Architects.
Though the findings of the study were slated to appear in a book, it was never published. Nearly 60 years later, The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study (The Monacelli Press, 2016), completed the narrative. The author, Pierluigi Serraino, himself a practicing architect, referenced a trove of primary documents for the project, though he cautions that “it is very unlikely that what is presented here mirrors what the two psychologists primarily in charge of the study…had envisioned for the original publication.” Serraino had access to behind-the-scenes information that shines a light on the researchers, subjects, and context surrounding the study, which gives the book a valuable vantage point.
The initial findings of the study graced the front page of the Carnegie Quarterly in July 1961. The Carnegie Corporation was a source of funding for IPAR, which asked for $150,000 over a five-year period (which would be about $1,400,000 today).
Courtesy of Institute of Personality and Social Research, UC Berkeley and The Monacelli Press
Researchers simulate the Conformity Test. In this scenario, five subjects in private booths estimate distances after a light indicates the other participants’ answers—the supplied answers are fake, however, allowing this test to measure the effect of peer pressure on judgment. While Victor Lundy saw through the deception, others deferred to the false responses.
Courtesy of Institute of Personality and Social Research, UC Berkeley and The Monacelli Press
See the full story on Dwell.com: The Little-Known Personality Study on the Giants of Midcentury Architecture
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