aae2016 Research Based Education - Volume Two
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WORKSHOP STRUCTURE 1. Case study presentation: a spectrum of case studies from the Live Projects Network (Anderson and Priest, 2012) and current live research projects running at Queen’s University Belfast will be discussed in relation to the different research activities and outcomes that they have produced. 2. Question for workshop participants: What research emerges from your Live Projects? Subsequent questions to be posed during a whole group discussion: What research methodologies could you employ? Is there a conflict with required teaching outcomes? What potential do Live Projects have for innovative research? 3. Drafting up research objectives for future Live Projects: “Design research should never be something that just happens at the beginning of a project� (Fraser, 2013). Using this model of design research as a continuous activity, working in small groups, what other potential research outcomes can you identify from your Live Project?
DISCUSSION In architectural live projects, students and academics work with external organisations and communities to generate projects (also known as Design Build, Service Learning, Extension Projects). These transformative projects bridge the gap between research and practice (Dodd et al., 2012), ranging from urban masterplans and design strategies to prototypes and completed buildings. Live projects are transformational and respond to diverse challenges such as innovative construction for impoverished rural communities, participatory design and informal settlements. Despite the innovation of these projects and their sound basis in the latest inter-disciplinary academic and practice expertise, most scrutiny has been given to their pedagogical and material benefits for students and communities. (Harriss and Widder, 2014) Architectural live projects straddle education, research and practice boundaries with academics, students and external collaborators undertaking real projects in the real world. Live projects create new ways to generate, test and apply research in authentic contexts, yet these benefits to research are not widely recognised (Dodd et al., 2012). This workshop aims to identify live project research methodologies and territories, stimulating their potential for innovation, authenticity and expansion of existing definitions of research. This workshop operates within a context where not only is this potential unrecognised among many live project participants, but where the closest field of research, architectural research by design, is being contested in terms of methodology and external recognition (Fraser, 2013). The ambition of the workshop is to facilitate live project educators in the expression of their work as research in a way that is recognised by research assessment structures, stimulating recognition, quality and dissemination of live project research.
SIGNIFICANCE Live Projects and Research by Design are both recent innovations in the discipline of architecture (Benedict Brown, 2012). Architectural design is suited to both research by design as well as the more established scientific, humanities, social sciences and text-based research methodologies. Architectural researchers must become expert in these multiple methodologies and must wrestle with all the difficulties of internal and external recognition