Proposal

The aim of my article is to reflect on the necessity of finding an efficient way in which designers can communicate with people in order not only to design for them, but to involve them in the design process.

Everyone, designer or not, has his own ideas about how his house or city should be. Collecting those ideas from a community and transform them in an actual design requires more than creativity and good intentions.

The first part of the article provide a theoretical background for the topic and it is based on research in literature. In particular I will develop some key points about what constitute design knowledge, the relationship between designers and the people for whom they design, how designer can involve people in the process of designing, what kind of tools are required and what is under design.

The literature research includes:

Davis, Meredith (2008), “Why Do We Need Doctoral Study in Design?” International Journal of Design, 2(3), 71-79.

Jones, John Christopher (1970), Design Methods: seeds of human futures, London: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Illich, Ivan (1973), Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row.

Sanders, Elisabeth (2006), Scaffolds for building everyday creativity. In J. Frascara (Ed.), Designing effective communications: Creating contexts for clarity and meaning. New York: Allworth Press.

Fisher , Gerard (2002). Beyond couch potatoes: From consumers to designers and active contributors. First Monday, 7(12). Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/152

The second part of the article will give an insight into two study cases.

The first one is a housing project developed by ELEMENTAL studio in Chile. Here the architects, leaded by Alejandro Aravena, decided to respond to the demand of social housing by creating a framework in which a basic house was provided but at the same time it was given to the people the possibility to implement it according to their needs and financial possibilities.

The second project embrace the urban level and it is a research project started by Ekim Tan and called The responsive City. The goal is to rethink collectively the planning of the city. In this case the tool designed by Tan is a collective game which allowed the urban planner to collect the information needed directly from the people in a bottom-up process.

Everyone is welcome to comment,

Thank you

Michela

problemstatement

Hi everyone,

I want to write about historical research methods. This is because I’m writing an essay about the history of the Lijnbaan (part of the shopping centre Rottedam) and I was struggling how to deal with the sources I’m using. And that’s why my problem stating is like this:

Historical research is part of the interpretive research methods and it is based on narrative or emplotment. It is a quantitative and that’s why it brings up the consideration about the verification of this kind of research. L. Groat and David Wang wrote three weaknesses of this kind of quantitative research. The first is the dependence upon emplotment an literary construction. Second is the lack of empirically objecting of inquiry for observation. The last contains the flexibility of the guideline for this kind of research. (Groat, Wang 2002)

In my essay I want to bring up this issue about (architectural) historical research and want to elaborate the different kind of methods for Historical research compared to the tree weaknesses of Groat and Wang.

Feel free to comment on this issue, also if you know some literatuur on this topic I would be very happy!

My best,

Susanne

On oyster farms and pearl diving

Critical summary - Friday June 10th - presentation by Hilde Remoy and Hans Teerds

Architecture unites several researchers working in different fields. Confronted with each other, it is extremely interesting to see how one comes to new findings by a precisely defined process, as seeding knowing what to harvest later on. Others start gathering right away, sorting out useful knowledge along the way.

Urged by an increasing amount of vacant office buildings Hilde Remoy decided to do her PHD on structural vacancy. Having defined structural vacancy as illness she decided to find out the causes and the symptoms. Several methods are used in the research, both quantitative and qualitative: on the one hand databases on vacancy and real estate transactions, on the other hand panel research according to the Delphi method. The mix of methods should lead in the end to triangulation; confirmation of the results. The research looks very structured and hard to contradict.
It has so far resulted in two bulky and impressive publications, her dissertation and the book 'Transformatie van kantoorgebouwen'. Both publications are not limited to analysis of causes, they provide a conceptual framework as well to explore transformation possibilities and prevent future vacancy.

A completely different type of research is presented by Hans Teerds. Fascinated by the role and function of public space nowadays he started to study the roots of the idea of public space and especially Hannah Arendt. He wants to understand the work of Arendt in it's original context and stayed therefore several months in the Hannah Arendt archive in Bard College, NY, USA.
The research is rather unstructured and explorative. Close-reading texts has to lead to surprising new insights. Hans Teerds regards himself as a pearl diver. Initially in unknown water, now slowly finding his way towards hidden treasures. It seems hard to define a point of synthesis in the research, a point were the diver can respire before getting drown in the ocean of knowledge, desperately digging for the ultimate understanding. To quote Arendt, 'in order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism'.