How to come up with an architectural concept

Creating and developing architectural concepts is something a lot of students and indeed many architects struggle with. This may be due to project pressures, writers block, limited inspiration, or just the fact that for many students their architecture schools particularly in the first couple of years, don’t teach and stress the importance of them.

As we discuss here in “How to develop an architecture concept”, the best conceptual approaches should always aim to provide the backbone and foundation to a new project, and form part of the initial process as much as your site analysis should do.

There are many methods of coming up with a concept, and by following the process’s described in the above articles, they can be derived from almost anything; personal experiences and influences, emotions, perceptions, research, analysis …there are many

Here we provide a list of 21 concept ideas that can be used as starting points for your conceptual development and help steer you in the right direction as your project develops. Note though, that to create a meaningful approach these listed ideas must be tied back to your own thought processes, interpretations and analysis, in order for them to be bespoke to your project …there is not a one size fits all.

Following each description we provide a Pinterest link to a list of examples that demonstrate how each concept can be used in a real world scenario, or how it can be explained through concept sketches and models.