City-Profession-University & Architectural Research (original) (raw)

Architecture & Research: a possible structure

This article results from three conferences organized by the research project titled "Architectural research framework" developed by the research center Architectural Lab – LabART – of the Lusófona University, and also by my personal experiences and dialogs with other members of the EAAE research committee. Architectural research always existed, but only recently some major questions have emerged, by the time that Europe started the last universitary reform on the 80's. Two aspects are crucial in understanding the problematic that we are referring to. On the one hand we verify that the architectural teaching should maintain the articulation and close relationship between the theoretical and practical aspects. On the other hand, there is a need to confer academic degrees, as the MsC and PhD's in the Faculties of Architecture. Inevitably, discussions began about the scientificity of architecture (its grounding), the types of research, methodological models, as well a...

Architectural Practice, Education and Research: on Learning from Cambridge

For an Architect’s Training, 2013

This paper reports firstly on the interrelated roles of architectural practice, education and research and focuses on the unique contribution of the Cambridge School in this area. The following section presents the drawbacks derived from a research assessment exercise where architecture was no longer considered an academic subject to be developed in a research intensive university and, finally, concludes that architecture in Cambridge succeeded in spite of its problems, not in the absence of them, which suggests strongly that other European architectural schools can learn from it.

What is architectural research today and where is the ground?

SAJ - Serbian Architectural Journal, 2014

Why make large structures from rubber bands with students of architecture? How does such an endeavour relate to architectural education? And if rubber band structures are neither buildings, nor models of buildings, but experiments of some sort, what kind of knowledge do they generate relevant to construction industry and the built environment? These are some of the issues which have surfaced at the conference "ISSUES? Concerning the projects of Peter Eisenman" held in Belgrade in November 2013. They are related to a string of design research projects recently completed at the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Architecture and documented in the thematic volume of Serbian Architectural Journal titled "Architectural Education in the Post Digital Age" which was published independently but almost concurrently with the conference. In continuity with arguments given in that publication, this paper will provide a brief overview of some relevant and generally accepted t...

Design research and a shift in architectural education and practice

EAAE-ARCC International Conference & 2nd VIBRArch: The architect and the city, 2020

Research, once associated only with academia, now equally connects to learning and practice in architecture, as focus has shifted towards a wider design research community. Research has become inclusive of formerly marginalised areas such as process-oriented and practice-based research in the arts and humanities as well as applied commercial research undertaken by industry. Providing a first study of this shift, this paper explores why design research is of growing importance to architecture. It systematically analyses a selection of current cases at the intersection of architectural practice and education within the UK to survey existing design research approaches, and asks: How can design research transform and create new architectural practices and forms of education? Following this question, the paper discusses some of the design research models used across architectural practice and education.

Architecture as a Science: Boundary Work and the Demarcation of Design Knowledge from Research

Recent STS literature has described a trend of academisation in higher education and universities in which administrative bodies and formalised practices like evaluations have gained increased infl uence. This article discusses the impact of such trends on the discipline of architecture, focusing on the strains and boundaries that architectural faculties face in their research and teaching practice. Specifi cally, the development of design knowledge from individual and multiple theoretical and methodological approaches, the tight connection with tacit knowledge forms, as well as the use of non-formalised tenure and peer-review indicate on-going processes of boundary work (Gieryn, 1983), where external disciplines evaluate architectural knowledge production and demarcate it from their own research approaches. Due to the increased meaning of evaluations, such boundary work plays an increasing role in framing the form and content of design research. In this respect, architectural research becomes a matter of negotiation that not only involves architecture, but also traditional research disciplines as well as the added restrictions of interdisciplinary and administrative bodies.

The Political Economy of Architectural Research

The status of architectural research has not yet been clearly defined. Nevertheless, architectural research has surely become a core element in the profession of architecture. In fact, the tendency seem for architects to be less and less involved with building design and construction services, which are more efficiently taken care of by engineering firms. On the contrary, the production and dissemination of knowledge is becoming central to the work of architects, who are more and more differentiating their activity throughout a variety of media such as exhibitions, publications, events, studios and workshops. The Dutch case is particularly instructive, since the Netherlands provided a vast network of public funding institutions for non-academic architectural research initiatives. In in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, this network acted as a true welfare institution, allowing architects to find work opportunities after the shrinkage of the traditional architecture job market. Yet, this public spending is not to be seen just as a simple welfare policy, but it acted as a new model of urban development, triggering a series of urban renewal projects based on the injection of “creative” activities in vacant buildings and problematic neighborhoods. The public funding model is probably destined to an end. In 2011, the Dutch government approved cuts for 200 million euros to cultural activities, which led to the disappearance of internationally renowned architecture research institutions, such as the Berlage Institute. Nevertheless, the effects of the economic crisis seem to have brought permanent structural and anthropological transformations in the profession of architecture. In this process, new institutions and new subjectivities are emerging. The figure of the Dutch architect is today far from that of the 1990s, which was epitomized by the figure of the Superdutch—a cynical, brutally optimist white male able to surf on top of the waves of the Dutch “Golden Age”. This article attempts to sketch the portrait of the new architect-researcher as a knowledge worker, caught between contrasting forces of precarity of employment, budget cuts, populism, co-optation and gentrification.

Rethinking Models of Architectural Research

Historically, an argument can be made that architectural research was produced internal to firms and manufacturers as proprietary objects or sets of data. The concept of disciplines and professions reinforced the separation of open-sourced knowledge and the application of that knowledge in a commercial context. However, design has rapidly changed from an object-solution profession and is now faced with finding solutions to complex problems within complex systems. The past practice model of client, architect, and final product seems an ill-fit in this new context. The question is how to integrate a critical research process into a professional capacity in which that architectural research needs an inherent and immediate value to be performed or pursued. The SYNCH Research Group [synchRG] was formed in response to this question. Although research consortiums, design initiatives and research centres exist within many schools of architecture, most operate as a department or extensions of a school of architecture. SynchRG operates in neither private practice nor as a division of the university. Organized as a diverse and fluid association of faculty, students, professionals, and consultants, the synchRG group is focused on a design methodology and philosophical structure rather than a client, site, building, typology, or object. The focus on idiosyncratic or aesthetic solutions to singular problems is set aside in order to provide a collaborative intellectual space for professional based explorations. The paper will examine synchRG’s response to current architectural research challenges and illustrate its unique structure as a possible model to be replicated. A dialogue will be initiated on a model for practice aligned with both academia and industry