Free range ideation

Although the ideation workshop is studio-based, realistically ideation is situated  in many 'other places'. The free flow of ideas, then, suggest designers face a minimum of constraints for thinking and making when ideating. In such a creative environment, ideation becomes akin to a 'free range' activity rather than a 'caged' activity whereby ideators can move freely in the ideation space, both physically and virtually while engaging with a broad range of ideation tools. In this sense, the workshop is makeshift or nomadic in character allowing for the greatest ideation experience possible.

Ideas of both artistic and social significance

The workshop encourages the participants to engage with as many ideation tools as possible, from drawing and words to modelling and computing ("sensory input"). This hands-on approach may suggest ideas for ideas sake where autonomy and individualism run counter to processes of socialisation. However, the workshop supports a creative approach to ideation without being "arty" because ideas, while abstract, visual or concrete, have a social context too, that is, design ideas carry social significance if not social obligation. So, the workshop doesn't set up an opposition between self-realisation and social reality. In this, the workshop is inspired by creative thinking and making in the applied arts. Says Frank Gehry, the American architect and designer: 'I always start from the understanding that architecture is art and was always considered an art. Everyone became architects after being painters. El Greco, he became an architect. I've always thought that, but it gets pretentious and pompous to talk about it that way as our culture doesn't see architecture as an art and most buildings are not art'. El Greco, howver, was far from the only renaissance artist cum architect. Brunelleschi, for example, was a master goldsmith and sculptor before he turned architect designing and building the cupola of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, the highest and widest masonry dome ever built.