Academic Research in Areas of Design Practice: Architecture (original) (raw)
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Areas of Design Practice as an Alternative Research Paradigm
Design principles & practices, 2009
The view of the world from different subjects is quite distinct, resulting in a different view of what it is to know, and what it is that is known about. Scientists are stereotypically Realists who seek objective facts about an independent external world. Literary theorists are stereotypically Constructivists, seeking insightful interpretations that are relevant to their community. Each overarching set of values and beliefs about the world is called a worldview, which determines the ontological, epistemological and methodological attitudes of the researcher to the object of investigation. These attitudes form a research paradigm within which certain activities are regarded as appropriate by peers and, as a result, produce relevant responses to perceived research questions. This paper presents an investigation that was funded by the Swedish Institute into architectural research as evidenced in Swedish doctoral theses. The sample was mapped and analysed in terms of clusters of interest, approaches, cultures of knowledge and uses of design practice. This allowed the identification of the ontological, epistemological and methodological attitudes of the researchers, and hence a glimpse of the implicit worldview. The authors claim that the relationship between values and beliefs (worldview), and actions (paradigm), in emerging areas of design research such as architecture is often under-scrutinised, resulting in a disjunction between actions and aims. One outcome of the project was a diagrammatic representation of various approaches evidenced in the theses. This representation made explicit the similarities and differences between the researchers' attitudes to the ontological, epistemological and methodological issues; and exposed distinct roles for practice in academic research. The responses to these issues in architectural research reflect the different values and beliefs regarding the roles of design practice in research. The project concluded that research in areas of design practice may constitute a new worldview requiring its own, more appropriate, research paradigm. Prefatory comment A funded research project has formal deliverables that can be described in terms of its intellectual components such as applications for funding, reports and responses to formal questions. In these terms, the format of the project is predetermined-there are clear questions, methods and an anticipation of the sort of contribution it will make to the area (cf. AHRC 2009: 29). A research project also consists of an informal speculative process of investigation and discovery which grounds and executes the formal project in terms of the particular reasoning, iterations, interim outcomes and stages that lead to the structuring of consequential questions (Guba & Lincoln 1994: 11). In the case of the Swedish Architectural Theses project, the latter description is the one that characterizes the main contribution of the research. The speculative process of investigation rather than the statistical findings are at the core of the contribution made by this study. Therefore in this paper, the research will be described in terms of the questions that the research raised and the structure within which fruitful discussion on these significant questions occurred and can continue.
Pesquisa Acadêmica em áreas de Prática Projetual Academic Research in areas of Design Practice
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Research funding bodies and higher level education institutes with an interest in academic research strive to define what research in design areas is, and how it can be identified and evaluated. It is common that the academic community adopts a traditional definition of research, usually one that has its origins in the scientific model of research. This means that the traditional scientific model of research is generally regarded as the dominant one in the academic arena. However, it can be anticipated that a scientific model might not offer the ideal structure for defining what is research in the humanities (cf. Gibbons et al, 1994).
A Critical Mapping of Practice-Based Research as Evidenced by Swedish Architectural Theses
In 2005 the Swedish government passed a Bill that broadened the scope of the Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) to include the creative and performing arts. The Bill Research for a Better Life was the response to a three-year experimental period of ring-fenced funding in areas of national interest. In 2006 the initiatives by Vetenskapsrådet (which included funding Biggs as one of four international visiting professors in so-called practice-based research hosted in Sweden) were the subject of a quality review. The commissioning of this review showed the concern at a national level with the potential competitive advantage of establishing and exploiting a category of academic research in the creative industries (CI). Interestingly, architecture is included in these areas, unlike
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she has been the founding head of the School's Doctoral Programme with over 40 Scandinavian and international PhD students. The Programme is opened to PhD students recruited from various "making" professions such as artists, designers, architects, planners, art and design educators and engineers. She has a broad teaching and research practice from Scandinavia and other countries. During the recent decennium she has been mainly involved in issues of knowledge in the design professions. Since 1991 she has edited and co-edited the journal Research Magazine, which documents the development of this field of inquiry in the context of vocational and research education. She has lectured extensively at the doctoral level and supervised PhD students in norway and abroad. She has successfully served as a main doctoral supervisor for many PhD students as well as been external examiner at numerous public doctoral disputations in norway and abroad. She has been commissioned as an evaluator by several research councils in Scandinavia and has also experience from assessing eu-funded research.
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This article aims to make a contribution to the debate on architectural research and academic education. Although their detailed roles and reflective procedures are still disputed, research and design are becoming more and more acknowledged as complementing sources for architectural knowledge. Design can happen within practice or as independent design explorations, in order to add to more traditional research. In contrast to various other design fields (e.g. service design or graphic design), architecture involves much longer production processes and larger costs, so that the realization of fullscale projects – exceeding pavilions or the like – within academic research is difficult. Lately, education too has received some attention for the role it can play within research. Design exploration within a master studio course has the potential to produce multiple illustrations of what is possible and also relevant for a defined context, but it is independent of everyday practicalities. A...
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