Post-Research Architecture

Any discussion of “research” in design involves many issues, including the crisis of disciplinary history of architecture, education, and the place of architecture within the capitalist system of appropriation and recycling of capital. Presenting a critical view of the state of architectural pedagogy, this paper will discuss issues involved in the main theme of this conference. If the instrumental vision implied in “project based research in architecture” is suspended momentarily, then the chance is given to suggest that, since the dawn of modernity, design has indeed evolved through constant re-adjustment of the foundations of architecture. What needs to be added here is that architectural research is carried out either in response to the internal demands of the discipline, or due to the pressure introduced by external factors; such as innovation of new techniques and materials, migration of new architectonic ideas from one region to another, and interdisciplinary exchange between architecture and other fields. The idea of research in architecture, however, has taken a different direction since the end of World War II, when architecture in most western countries had to re-think its internal economy according to the emergence of new technologies. These techniques, contrary to the ones architecture faced at the beginning of modernization, are mostly research-based and their subject matter is primarily concerned with the “science of building.” By the mid1960s, one theoretical implication of this development would be “design methods” derived from system theory. Another would be the position taken by architects who attempted to re-think architecture within its disciplinary history. Presenting the issues involved in architectural design from two divers historical periods, this paper wishes to argue that any critical discussion of “research” in modernity necessarily involves addressing thecrisis of architectural pedagogy, and the impact of technification of architecture on design theories. In addition, the design methodologies practised in most schools of architecture warrant the following question: Would not a positivistic approach to design further alienate architecture from its disciplinary history tossing the art of building into the realm of knowledge based theories?