Is doing architecture doing research?

Abstract

This lecture will take as its starting point the essential tenet that architecture is a form of knowledge that can and should be developed through research. To hold to this tenet, it is first necessary to address three positions that have evolved around architectural research, and which may have held back the development of research in our field. The first is that architecture is such a particular form of knowledge that it needs particular forms of research to investigate it or, at worst, cannot be subjected to the standard expectations of academia. The second position is almost the opposite, namely that architecture needs to be subjected to the methods of other disciplines if it is to be taken seriously as a form of rigorous knowledge. The third position is that doing architecture through the act of design is a form of research in its own right, and therefore architectural research should move from the academy and be located most firmly in practice. The lecture will question each of these positions as a basis on which to develop architectural research. One has to understand that architecture has its own particular knowledge base and procedures, but this particularity does not mean that one should avoid the normal expectations of research. In fact it demands us to define clearly the context, scope and modes of research appropriate to architecture, whilst at the same time employing the defining features of research, namely originality, significance and rigour. To achieve this, the lecture will argue that architectural research has to shift from addressing discrete aspects of architectural knowledge (i.e. historical or technical or aesthetic or social) and instead move to understanding the relationship between the various aspects (i.e. historical and technical and aesthetic and social). There is some urgency in this, because as long as architecture fiddles around at the margins of the research debate, it will be confined to the margins of the development of knowledge. The present state of architecture is perhaps indicative that the state of marginality has been reached. The establishment of the discipline founded on research-led knowledge in the manner outlined may be one small way of claiming a bit more of the centre ground.