Influences and Processes Involved in Generating Creative Products : Implications for Landscape Architects

Creativity is the ability to bring something new into existence consciously with 'something new' being a product resulting from a process initiated by a person. It may be an idea, an artwork of acknowledged greatness, a scientific discovery, the solution to a problem, leadership abilities, or theories and products that are unique and novel. Influences involved in generating creative products include the social and historical milieu in which creativity is carried out, a culturally defined domain, the creative person's personality, cognitive factors, and motivational characteristics. Research on creative processes mostly involves scientific insight. It includes processes of memory, intelligence, reasoning by analogies, problem solving and problem finding. These processes manifest through convergent, divergent, and analogous thinking tasks. Finding correlations between cognitive processes associated with scientific insight and design abilities of landscape architects, recognizes landscape architecture as a field where creative genius occur.