The Creative Learning Spiral: Designing Environments for Flaring and Focusing

Abstract

With growing interest in creative learning in recent years, this paper sought to define creative learning through the design of learning spaces. Two learner groups were studied for their interactions with peers, educators, and their spaces—design students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, a traditional architectural studio environment, and student entrepreneurs at the Harvard Innovation Lab, a startup venture incubator. The result was a new design framework called the creative learning spiral, which groups creative learning into four types of activities: sparking, making, grazing, socializing. The open layouts of both settings facilitated social learning activities of sparking, grazing, and socializing, whereas making time required students to create their own focused environments. The creative learning spiral can be used as a tool to assess the spatial needs of specific creative learning activities, in order to design environments that accommodate the needs of learners.