Between Real and Phantasy: Encouraging Creativity in the First Year Architectural Education Through Fairy Tales

The first year architectural education is based on understanding the nature of creativity in design thinking, which serves to build a solid base for a real design process; and in studios several methods are used to develop it. This study aims to discuss how using fairy tales can serve as a tool for encouraging creativity in first year design studios. It is based on a 6-week-long basic design II summer school course where 20 architecture and interior architecture students were asked to write fairy tales in a fantasy genre and visualise their fairy tale environment. At the end of this experimental study, we learned four important lessons: (a) when Gen Z students meet design issues first, they can be more involved and interested if they are given the opportunity to reveal their dreams and imaginations without any restriction; (b) they can show their open-mindedness, and accept the fact that a good presentation performance even with hand drawing is possible, without using technological tools; (c) fairy tales with their unique structures can lead them to advance their “out of the box” thinking. Combining phantasy with reality might be a good tool for liberating the power of imagination which ultimately can bring good design thinking abilities and enhanced creativity, and finally (d) a further study about how they implemented this experiment in their second year design problem is worthy of further analysis.