Lou,
As to Bridges, on 18, they actually brought in a land planner to tweak my routing for better home lots, and that hole came as part of the deal. Obviously, great to use the lake, but two forced carries is something I would never do. The green had to be elevated to where it is for flood protection....so that hole definitely falls outside the bounds of creative genius. On the fifth, the weeds were so high the contractor actually built the green at the second LZ point, but we were able to add a back tee to keep it somewhat the length intended. The now dry creek was an attempt to mimic the first hole at TOC, but the developer was never on board with it and grassed it or cobbled it, it never had recirculating water.
The second example sure shows how, in my opinion, creative genius really is limited by practical matters in most facilities, where contrary to the old say....it really is the money that matters! And, you can't fight mother nature, he who has the gold rules, if you can't maintain it, it will be gone in five years, and about a half dozen oft used clichés.....
Back on the happier topic, my example of AI is somewhat the musings of a wandering mind, but I have little doubt as to computers generally taking an increasing role in design, even if on the CM side. I can't imagine your self contained vehicle working for a while, and agree I would have to program my key field design keys to change in for it to work. For example, on most holes seeing the target from the hitting area is desired, and you could program a vehicle to stop at certain key points, and check for visibility, or traverse the fairways to see if there are any spots with surface grades less than 3%, since that is often a criteria. I am sure I would want to see the finished product myself, though. Just like that self driving car that hit a woman in the street, I would be wary of total automation.
We do use photo imaging to supplant site visits every once in a while.
Back to the main topic, I got to thinking again about Ian's comment about being uncomfortable to be creative. My take would be that the truly creative personality would never feel uncomfortable, never know a box was there to break out of.........
However, as it is always a mix of practical and intuitive/artistic, we could both be right. As Clint Eastwood might say, "A man has got to know his limitations" and I think I know where my tendencies lie and what I might need to do to overcome them in the design phase. Ian is probably expressing the same. And, I think we see it in golf course design, and know it when we see it when the basic approach is one of all out, out of the box thinking (think Mike Strantz) vs. some other very practical designer where everything is in the right place but it has no soul, etc.
The next debate would be whether the all out style of Mike Strantz is really better design than some other blend? And, it would matter what our perspectives were more than the actual work. The supers might hate it, some golfers might hate it, and some would love it for what it is, etc. Which leads us to "horses for courses" where Mike's starting point was being different, and he met that goal. But, design is always a blend and compromise, often giving up something to achieve something else.
Or, to bring it back to the OP, you absolutely can't define how to create exceptional architecture, but you can probably come up with several definitions, depending on your perspective as one of the end users. Each architect varies in their blend or elements, and each end user varies in what is important to them.