Is being able to visualize a plan the same thing as imagination?
The definition I picked up of imagination is "the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses."
The use of templates splits that definition right in half. They're not new ideas, but they are not present on a new piece of ground.
Interesting in light of past discussions. I believe there are very few people with creative personalities, and studying them, I believe the mental process of churning and maybe combining ideas from various different places across the universe is the key. Most people, including Raynor and other engineers, are only capable of straight line, point to point thinking, not the kind of internal brainstorming creative people do.
In fact, big corporations and even small designers have brainstorming sessions frequently, as it doesn't necessarily have to be one brain that comes up with the right idea. Many can contribute, sometimes unexpectedly, as in saying something makes someone else think of an entirely different thing that leads to a solution to whatever problem.
Only semi related, but back when I had a bigger staff, we would sometimes look at a supposedly "finished" design and I would ask each what one thing they might do to make the design better without changing the basic idea. Usually, the answers were along the lines of trimming trees back here or there to open up the view, widen the fw, make the bunker more attractive, etc., etc. etc. It was a little easier on the designer's ego if just one specific thing was added. And, for the most part, there quickly came a time where the one thing got close to impossible to name, providing everyone was in the spirit of improving that design concept, not replacing it with one of their pet concepts.
BTW, Pet concepts of different architects also might be a good topic, although from memory, I think we did discuss it once.