Architect's vision, creative process and architecture for empowerment: learning from creative process of Indonesian architects

In the course of architect's career, a vision of work is developed. The firm's orientation where the architect works becomes one determining factor of the vision. The vision may change over time based on their professional experiences. At some point, some architects decide to focus only on a particular project, such as architecture for empowerment. This research was conducted by analysing theoretical and empirical studies of architect's creative process. The study was done through a qualitative approach. The participating architects were chosen purposively. Exploration was conducted through deep retrospective interviews. This study aims at: (1) describing the relevance between the architect's vision and his creative process; (2) describing the proportion of combination between problem solving process and the process of self-expression in the creative process in the architecture domain; (3) describing the proportion of combination between problem solving process and self-expression process in architectural creative process for empowerment. The main findings are: (1) every architect develops a personalized creative vision. The architect's creative vision will vary the creative process, although it may not always be the dominating factor of the creative process; (2) in the creative work process, the architect may not always determine the problem solving domination or the self-expression domination as his identity; (3) in the case of architectural design for empowerment, the architect's creative process is dominated by problem solving, even it is possible for the loss of self-expression.