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The fields of Psychology - in general - and Educational Psychology - in particular - have a great deal to offer architectural educators and students in their search for training and becoming a better problem-solver and designer. Understanding the human nature of thinking and reasoning mechanisms, as the central issue of the design process, makes the major content in this article.
This article reviews the subject of “thinking” and all related categories of: “types”, “modes”, and “styles” of thinking with respect to design. The subject of “interactive” model of thinking and design process, as the most comprehensive model of thinking, has been introduced in this article. For this purpose, the Iowa State University’s “Complex Thinking Processes”
model - which defines an interaction between “Content/Basic”, “Critical”, and “Creative” thinking - is integrated with a proposed model for design methodology - which introduces an interaction between three stages of “Understanding”, “Idealizing”, and “Presenting”.
At the end, some educational recommendations have been made in an attempt to set an educational methodology for Architectural Design education.