Research: The Latest Architecture and News

This article was originally published by Common Edge as "The Confused and Impoverished State of Architectural Research."

For a discipline that thinks of itself as learned, scholarly research eludes the architectural profession. This is a long standing problem. “Failure,” John Ruskin wrote in his 1848 introduction to The Seven Lamps of Architecture, “is less frequently attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labor, than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.”

Roughly 150 years later, Harry Nilsson—surely singing to architects—opined in his song, Joy that if you’re unable to find the answer to a question, you may not have a question worth asking (and probably don’t have a problem worth solving). In between Ruskin and rock and roll, is William Peña, the author of the architectural programming guide, Problem Seeking, who nearly a half-century ago wrote that “you can’t solve a problem unless you know what it is.”

Now a one-year program with student funding, the Design Research, Writing & Criticism MA program at NYC’s School of Visual Arts empowers professionals as researchers, writers and—above all—critical thinkers.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) is pleased to announce the “Call for Proposals” for its CTBUH 2017 Student Research Competition – culminating with an award of $20,000 to be recognized at the CTBUH 2017 Conference to be held in Sydney, Australia, from October 30 to November 3, 2017. The funding for this competition has been made possible with the kind support of Underwriters Laboratories.

International call for fellows
Research fellowship in the fields of architecture, design and digital culture

Professor Alan Short of the University of Cambridge has published a book advocating for the revival of 19th-century architectural ideas to address the crippling energy use of modern skyscrapers. The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture proposes an end to the architectural fetish for glass, steel, and air conditioning, instead drawing inspiration from forgotten techniques in naturally ventilated buildings of the 1800s. The book is a culmination of 30 years’ research and design by Prof. Short and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge.

The Deborah J. Norden Fund, a program of The Architectural League of New York, was established in 1995 in memory of architect and arts administrator Deborah Norden. The Fund has supported a fascinating array of projects, from a study of the Cambodian modernist Vann Molyvann, to the social impact of new architecture and planning interventions in Medellin, Colombia, to the insertion of built form into fragile ecosystems in Australia, to the stereotomy of complex surfaces in French Baroque architecture.

`Common Ground - Design and Research in Architecture & Landscape´

4. - 6. May 2017
7th international Symposium + PhD PeerReview
Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Sciences, Leibniz Universität Hannover

The symposium and PhD Review focuses on the production and communication of knowledge about architecture and landscape architecture connected with design-related research projects. The call is directed towards theorists, practicing architects, landscape architects and to PhD students or early Post Docs of both disciplines.

Arnold W. Brunner Grant

Purpose
Advanced study in any area of architectural investigation which will effectively contribute to the knowledge, teaching or practice of the art and science of architecture. The proposed investigation is to result in a publicly available written work, design project, research paper, or other form of presentation to be offered at the Center for Architecture.

The aim of the “Training” competition is to develop a design proposal for the sport facility typology, intended as a place where physical activity and/or sports entertainment can occur. Participants are asked to create innovative and unconventional projects on this theme, questioning the very basis of the notion of sport facility. After the recent closure of the European football cup and the Olympic games, you are asked to reinvent the way sports can be practiced, and how they can be used to entertain. 

Van Alen Institute and West Palm Beach launched Shore to Core, a design and research competition to reimagine the West Palm Beach downtown and understand how cities impact wellbeing. In the design competition, two finalist teams will be selected to participate in a 3-month design process and receive $45,000 to develop their work. The research team will receive $40,000 to develop their work, $10,000 to implement their pilot study.

The following interview with Reinier De Graaf was first published by Volume Magazine in their 48th issue, The Research Turn. You can read the Editorial of this issue, Research Horizons, here.

Architectural practice requires a degree of intimacy and insight into complex sets of forces. While building is architecture’s bread and butter, it’s not always the best format to make a statement. It’s sometimes not even the most appropriate language to respond to a brief. Volume spoke with Reinier de Graaf of OMA/AMO about how research and media can become a vessel for political agendas.

Montréal’s CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture), the international museum and research center which was founded by Phyllis Lambert in 1979 and is currently directed by Mirko Zardini, has launched a new iteration of its website. The organisation’s new online presence has been conceived as an active editorial project which aims for more than dissemination of information alone; rather, it will take positions and—being organised around several themes such as “The Planet is the Client,” “Origins of the Digital” and “Technology Sometimes Falls Short”—will reflect the CCA’s ongoing research interests.

This interview with Zardini has been conducted by Steffen Boddeker (currently Director of Communications at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation – GSAPP), who has worked with the CCA as a communications and online consultant overseeing its web presence since 2006.

Volume #48: The Research Turn is comprised entirely of interviews and conversations. We wanted to learn from those who have been instrumental in shifting the boundaries and shaping today’s landscape of creative knowledge production. The issue also includes the catalogue for BLUE: Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions by Malkit Shoshan, the Dutch contribution to the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Over the coming weeks Volume will share a curated selection of essays from this issue on ArchDaily. This represents the continuation of a partnership between two platforms with global agendas: in the case of ArchDaily to provide inspiration, knowledge and tools to architects across the world and, in the case of Volume, "to voice architecture any way, anywhere, anytime [by] represent[ing] the expansion of architectural territories and the new mandate for design."

Platform 8 catalogs a curated selection of work generated in the past year at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Alongside final products of design education, Platform 8 places particular emphasis on collecting and documenting the people and artifacts that shape research-driven design practices. Here, design is presented both as process and as a final product. Indexical structure, punctuated with a collection of portraits, presents a comprehensive picture of the school. Platform 8 shows the intention, direction, and passion seen and experienced every day at the GSD.

The ARCASIA Travel Prize in Architecture is the travel and research scholarship given annually to Young Architects of ARCASIA (40 years and under) and member of the institute of their country. The emphasis of the traveling scholarship is not only to promote research in the selected fields of study, but also to encourage cross border education as well as to foster cultural exchange between nations and institutes. Sponsored by NS Bluescope (Thailand), this year is the second year of the ARCASIA Travel Prize. For 2016, the ARCASIA Travel Prize aims to enable Young Architects to travel and to conduct design research in Thailand on the topic of humanitarian architecture.

Dean Judith DiMaio of New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) School of Architecture and Design and Associate Professor and Exhibitions Curator Naomi Frangos, are pleased to announce: UNDERSTANDING PLACE, an exhibition featuring internationally renowned Philadelphia architecture firm KieranTimberlake’s Dhaka Design-Research within University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design Masters of Architecture program.

In August 1975, Architectural Design magazine published a special edition about Women in Architecture. At the time, director Monica Pidgeon sent letters to 100 architects asking what women can contribute to architecture that men can’t (and vice-versa), as well as the advantages and disadvantages of being a woman in the profession.

Now, 40 years later, a new version of the study aims to repeat Pidgeon’s initiative through an online survey with similar questions.

Driving urban infrastructure modernization, improving citizen life by means of technology, sustainable innovation, wide band, Big Data… These are some of the subjects that will be discussed at the International Conference on City Sciences, that will take place at Santiago de Chile on the 16th and 17th of June.