Art and Design Commons^™

Preliminary design ideas, mostly not manifest, are generated in the designers’ minds at the very early stages of their encounter with the design problems. This paper reports a study of the sources from which these ideas are originated, and the corresponding role each source plays in the process of designing. The study was undertaken through the analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight Iranian professional architects about the ideation process of at least one of their design projects. To complement the data gathered through interviews, each interview was followed by a discussion session within a group of graduate architecture students, reflecting …