The Little-Known Personality Study on the Giants of Midcentury Architecture

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 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 chapters are methodically divided to cover the stages leading up to the study, its execution, and the results. The granular way in which Serraino details the logistics can feel cumbersome at times; the reader wants to leave the academic report and get to the "action," so to speak, of the study itself. With 150 illustrations, however, The Creative Architect gives readers plenty of diversion. Ranging from photographs to letters and completed forms to written notes, they give us intimate access to the personalities of both subjects and IPAR researchers.

During the course of the IPAR weekends, the architects were subjected to numerous tests to measure aspects of creativity and personality, including existing tests like the Myers-Briggs and the researchers’ original questionnaires. For the Mosaic Construction Test, developed by IPAR researcher Frank Barron to measure aesthetic sensibility, the architects were given one-inch tiles in 22 different colors and asked to create a composition to their own liking.

In groups of five, the architects also discussed the Third Arm Problem and the Ethics Problem. In the latter, a hypothetical architect named Mr. Brown has shown his plan to a client who is poised to accept the design, but on one condition: the client requires a change that conflicts with Mr. Brown’s vision. Mr. Brown can’t sway the client but wants to keep the project to broaden his reputation, keep his professional contract, and support himself and his staff. The architects wrote down what they would do in Mr. Brown’s position, then debated among themselves to reach a consensus.

Most fascinating of all is the insight we get into how the legendary architects viewed themselves and each other. On a peer-ranking sheet, a number of the architects named themselves as most creative out the 40 listed: Robert Anshen, Warren Callister, Philip Johnson, A. Quincy Jones, Victor Lundy, Eero Saarinen, and Raphael Soriano marked their own names first. From an adjective checklist, we know that despite his confidence, A. Quincy Jones considered himself "argumentative, complicated, emotional, high-strung, impatient, moody, nervous, self-controlled, self-denying, temperamental, and tense."

The most absorbing chapter, "The Mind of an Architect," dives into the personal interviews of 10 architects. Over sessions of an hour and 50 minutes, researchers probed for connections between personal and professional development. "During these sessions," writes Serraino, "seemingly unrelated topics were discussed: smoking habits, sleeping patterns, experiences with hypnosis, suicidal tendencies, dream patterns, depressive episodes, and more esoteric areas, including belief in telepathy, miracles, and black magic." 

Each section paints a compelling portrait that is sensitive to the architect’s upbringing and how it affected his career: John Johansen benefited from artistic parents who adored him, whereas George Nelson’s family was divided over its Jewish heritage, troubling his own identity. Philip Johnson’s interviewer reported that "occasionally he jumped up from his chair and looked at things on the wall or stared out the window…. The subject seems like a controlled psychotic." Richard Neutra is described as thinking of himself as able to solve all problems, though the interviewer, suggested that the architect’s domineering personality was a coping mechanism for a palpable fear of abandonment.

Despite the media attention that the IPAR study garnered, the findings eventually faded into obscurity. The Creative Architect does important work in reviving them, and though we can intuit much of the outcome—that "the truly creative person tends to be a nonconformist and is profoundly independent in judgment, thought, and action"—the constellation of perspectives and individual results is new. Overall, the book affirms the qualities of the creative spirit in a dissertation that still holds tremendous value.

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Top photo courtesy Institute of Personality and Social Research, UC Berkeley and The Monacelli Press

This article was originally published on August 16, 2016. It has been updated to include current information.

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