About this item
An unknown episode in the annals of modern architecture and psychology a 1950s University of California, Berkeley, evaluation of creativity with subjects including Eero Saarinen, I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, and 37 other major architects is published for the first time. The story of midcentury architecture in America is dominated by outsized figures Richard Neutra, George Nelson, Louis Kahn who were universally acknowledged as creative geniuses. Yet virtually unheard of is the intensive 1958 59 study, conducted at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley, that scrutinized these and dozens of other famous architects in an effort to map their minds. Deploying an array of tests reflecting current psychological theories, the investigation sought to answer questions that still apply to creative practice today: What makes a person creative? What are the biographical conditions and personality traits necessary to actualize that potential? The study s findings have been gathered through numerous original sources, including questionnaires, aptitude tests, and interview transcripts, revealing how these great architects evaluated their own creativity and that of their peers.
About the Author
Pierluigi Serraino, AIA, is an architect, author, and educator. His work and writings have been published in professional and scholarly journals such as Architectural Record, Artforum, Architecture California, the Journal of Architectural Education, and Architectural Design (UK) . He has authored and contributed to several books, among them Modernism Rediscovered (Taschen, 2000) , Eero Saarinen (Taschen, 2005) , and NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism (Chronicle Books, 2006) . His latest book is The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study (Monacelli Press, 2016) .
