Ruptures. Design Research and the Academisation of Architecture

Abstract

Until recently, university-based architecture was regarded as a discipline with professionally oriented design education at its core. Architectural research was conducted in fields such as the social- and engineering sciences. However, since the 1990s, more and more architects have begun conducting “design research”, and a growing number of Master’s and Ph.D. programs offer research-based design education. Against this background, in this dissertation I have analysed the culture and politics of design research at four architecture schools in the UK and USA. On a conceptual level, I combine recent studies identifying design research as phenomenon leading to an academisation of architecture with approaches from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and sociological, anthropological and historical literature on the profession of architecture. The research methods I use to analyse design research are based on qualitative social science approaches. In particular, I am interested in architects’ and architecture students’ perspectives on design research. Drawing on interviews, observations and analysis of research documents, I identify different cultures of design research and describe how this kind of research is practiced, organised and taught in each of these cultures. Furthermore, I show how the establishment of these cultures of design research is connected to and shaped by policies restructuring universities according to market principles. However, I do not want to reduce the practices, interactions and educational efforts constituting design research to mere products of science policymaking. Therefore, this thesis also examines architects’ rationales for conducting design research, and the historical trajectories these rationales are related to. One of the main findings of this analysis is that design research is a phenomenon that created, and continues to create, ruptures between architecture schools and the profession of architecture. In what follows, I will describe the problems these ruptures cause for the architects, as well as the novel opportunities for practice and education that they make possible at four different architecture schools.