Session 3: Architectural Design Research in the United Kingdom

The senior scholars and several members of the university department staff worked on the projects Wherever possible students were involved in the various stages of the work. Extensive background research into briefs was undertaken by students as part of their course work. Others were involved in the development of designs. Wherever possible site visits gave students opportunity to monitor work in progress and also to take part in reviewing the building and managerial techniques employed. The work done was mainly for the university staff itself or for government or government agencies. It included (1) a temporary mosque for the university campus, (2) a pharmacy building for the university located on the main ceremonial approach to the Republican Palace, (3) development of the agriculture faculty at Shambat, (4) a development plan for the Department of Architecture (and to date, the construction of the first phase of this plan), (5) student hostels for the university, (6) university staff housing, (7) the Department of Geography and (8) botany laboratories, (9) many small university alteration projects. All these projects were new concepts for Sudan. There was therefore little or no precedent; each involved a significant research and development content.

The staff of the Department were also undertaking private commissions (within certain limits set out by the university authorities). This undoubtedly contributed to the quality of the undergraduate teaching but also resulted in a rather small amount of staff research being done. One important exception to this was a very significant study of the thermal behaviour of mud brick and fired brick buildings which led to a series of publications through the National Building Research Station and was completed in the form of a PhD thesis.

After the political changes of July 1969 and the wide scale nationalisation of 1970 private practice became very restricted both inside and outside the Department of Architecture. But the new government organisations quickly began to pose new problems and some of them were submitted to the Department of Architecture for consideration. Two facts may be particularly important in this flow of work to the university. Firstly, because of the short period over which architects have been graduating in Sudan, the number of students within the undergraduate course is approximately the same as the number of members of the profession, and secondly because the postgraduate training facilities which have been made available for the university staff have allowed these people to gain considerable experience of research work, very few outside the Department have any such experience.

The corollary of the large student numbers in relation to the profession is that good supervised profession practice and practical experience for young graduates cannot be assured. It is therefore especially important that all graduates have some good project experience under the supervision of the university staff before they graduate. Many of them may be required to work on their own in some remote location right from the beginning of their career.

Thus within the university there is capable and experienced leadership and a large, readily available, work force eager to take part in important development projects while at the same time advancing their educational objectives.

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This new phase of development has resulted in staff and student involvement in the briefing and development phase of a number of important government projects. They have also been consulted on building material projects. Research by members of staff has increased considerably both on these sponsored projects and within the academic framework of higher degrees for which several members of staff are now working. Almost all the research work is on topics which have a direct bearing on the development of the country and include (1) Development of traditional mud brick construction in the form of vaults, (2) a study of the deterioration of mud walling due to rainfall, (3) a study of the flow of water and water vapour in traditional buildings, (4) a study of the cost of housing for government officials and means of reducing this cost, (5) a review of the effects of surface water drainage on the urban form of Khartoum, (6) a review of the problem of dust in the environment with particular reference to Khartoum. It is hoped that this deep involvement of the Department of Architecture in research and development work will continue. Not only is it of great benefit to the country but it has also helped forge a strong link between research and practice which should prove to be an important factor in the long term growth and effectiveness of the architectural profession in Sudan. The Chairman thanked the participants for their presentations and a discussion took place.

Discussion The main points made in the discussion are listed below. One of the issues to be taken up is that, although we are not doing any practice, we have this problem of making our research relevant to practice problems. (Mr. Joyce) The general introduction of practice training as part of a syllabus disrupts the programme of work in the school. (Professor Hinton) The Polytechnic required that the practice unit originally maintained a minimum of six months working capital. The actual effectiveness of this and productivity of the unit was unrealistic. (Professor Hinton) In Kumasi, out of fees earned by staff for practice work, the University takes 20% for faculty research funds and 10% for University development; the remaining 70% goes to the participating staff. Kumasi also has full-time permanent staff in the Department of Housing and Plan- ning Research undertaking projects. (Mr. Larbi) One of the biggest problems in research is the discontinuity created by the short term contracts offered to research workers; the difficulty in getting a continuity of financial support; the consequent uncertainty of staff contract renewals and the availability of resources between or during contracts to work on submissions for new work. (Mr. Doidge) (Professor Robertson) (Professor Wilson) Theoretical work, e.g. on understanding the causes of high standards of residential quality,

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appears to be uncommunicable to the practising architect; although sought after by economists, sociologists, etc. Through these other disciplines the research results are affecting buildings, through the briefing of developers rather than "architecture". (Mr. King) There is no tradition of research in Canada. I believe that research method as an educational discipline for the undergraduate, or postgraduate student is more important than the topic. (Dean Howarth) Lists of funding agencies for research are normally based on scientific categories into which architecture does not fit. (Dean Desbarats) Research Councils and funding agencies should be made aware of the career structure problems for research workers; and the need for adequate funds for the preparation of research documents. (Professor Johnson-Marshall) Schemes for the exchange of research and development staff between Central Government (and other agencies) and Universities should be encouraged. (Mr. Beckett) Cambridge University researchers have set up a private limited company to communicate results of computer aided design into practice. (Dr. Hawkes) In the field of environmental physics, architects are not suitable as research workers. (Professor Hardy) There is a need to establish links between research units to share staff in an effort to overcome the short-term discontinuous contract problem. (Dr. Taylor) Very often, although the customer states the research problem, he does not understand it. (Dr. Cammock)

SESSION THREE

Architectural Design Research in the United Kingdom.

Chairman: Charles Robertson

Chairman: I would like to give the floor to Bruce Beckett who is to present a paper on the context of architectural research in the United Kingdom.

Architectural Design Research in the United Kingdom: Bruce Beckett, Chief Architect, Scottish Development Department. Architectural design research may comprise either research into the design process itself or research into the various elements of a design which give it "commodity; firmness and delight".

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Under the second heading, research for architectural design may thus shade off into ancillary subjects, yielding information which greatly helps and influences design (for example, operational research into methods of organising the work in a specialised type of building); but which is itself remote from the greater part of the design process as a whole and often not best undertaken by architects. This paper is in five main parts, it begins by attempting to define the problem, it then goes on to present a conceptual model of architectural research developed by Mr. Dan Lacey, Chief Architect DES. In the third part it lists the main agencies where research is carried out and for what purposes it is carried out. The fourth part reviews the current situation and is substantially based upon data produced by Mr. John Redpath, formerly Director General of Research and Development in the Department of the Environment. The fifth and final part is a summary plus conclusions and a suggestion for a mechanism to determine priorities and to draw up a systematic programme of architectural design research.

I. DEFINITIONS AND IDENTIFICATION OF NEED

There are at least three major activities which are often subsumed within the term "research": research itself, which comprises both fundamental research to advance scientific knowledge and applied research which has a practical end in view; development, which is the use of the results of research directed to introducing or improving useful materials, devices, products and processes; and routine testing and assessment. The situation is complicated by the debasement of the term "research" by journalists to mean little more than a search, often only a literature search; all too often the term "research" is used in architectural circles with this debased connotation. The instructions for Public Expenditure Surveys give a useful definition: research involves invention and new knowledge attained by recognised objective scientific method; development comprises prototypes, applying research results or improving products and processes; routine activity consists of testing recording or giving information and is not research and development at all. Research in the construction industry enjoys a somewhat hostile environment. It is alien to a world of "practical men" who almost universally lack any research background and operate in an industry with no research tradition. These difficulties are compounded by a clash of ethic; on the one hand we find the scientific ethic, sceptical of judgement, expecting, even welcoming, criticism and correction; and on the other hand the professional ethic, reluctant to contradict or criticise colleagues or cast doubt upon their judgement. In the architectural world the situation is still worse since we are close to the artistic ethic whose principal characteristic appears to be, let us say, temperamental. Despite this, the construction industry wants and widely uses research results. There is continual pressure to improve services, save labour, build quickly, exclude noise from buildings, help the teacher to try a new method by providing a suitable building, save the hospital nurse's effort by more convenient design, avoid condensation in houses, reduce running cost of building—an endless list of needs by the industry for which the research effort can make a considerable contribution.

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Given that architectural research must exist in an unreceptive and confusing world it may be worth examining three major aspects in which research and practice impinge on each other; the need to identify research needs, to undertake research and to apply its results. The identification of research can be tackled from two directions, by finding uses for existing knowledge or by finding problems as yet unanswered. The application of existing knowledge is heavily dependent on the existence of appropriate and adequate incentives, so that it works tolerably well in the field of hardware where products can be made and sold but is less successful in other fields: for example, the application of scientific method to user requirement studies has been very slow. Approached from the other direction of finding new problems we arrive immediately at the situation that either people do not realise that they have a problem or that it never occurs to them to ask whether it is a problem which science could solve or has already solved. The whole phenomenon of course is a legacy of our inadequate research tradition. Recently in the Scottish Development Department we took a look at the problems of building on north sloping sites: four major house/road/site relationships were determined, a number of degrees of slope were identified and various other parameters such as car provision were considered to be of some consequence; all in all these produced some 300 possible solutions which it was proposed to examine by detailing and costing each proposal in turn. A prospect which filled the team concern with understandable dismay. Fortunately we were able to make contact with the Operational Research Department of Strathclyde University who agreed that the problem was a relatively simple exercise in mathematics and as a consequence of some three months, work the whole of the data required has now been obtained together with a good deal more besides. The problem is to know you have got a problem. SDD architects share with the Building Research Stations an interest in setting criteria for user requirements. In the past, standards were based on experience, but with changes in standards of living, in environmental pressures and in technology, research is required to establish criteria and ways of meeting them. This side of construction research requires an expertise which is not at present available in Scottish Government Service. Universities have been generous in helping with small projects. For the future, I hope to see appropriate scientific officers within the Scottish Office. To say this, is to record our appreciation of the great benefit we have received from the staff at BRS Thorntonhall through the years. We are convinced this service should be extended. A novel approach to the identification of research needs has been adopted by the Directorate of Research Requirements at DOE who have undertaken a positive and directed search by building scientists experienced in the industry and with a good scientific background. You will be familiar with the excellent biennial surveys they have produced and they are well known figures around the research laboratories of the construction industry. In addition they undertook work in two neglected fields of construction activity, computers and maintenance in the belief that by working in these fields they would throw up genuine research needs which have hitherto been neglected, a premise which has been substantiated in practice since both subjects have spawned research programmes offering excellent payoff possibilities. Research and Development in DOE

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is being reorganised at present but some of the good work goes on. One of the most fruitful of all fields for the identificaton of research needs is the design or building organisation with its own scientific staff. An excellent model of this kind is the Building Division of the Department of the Scientific Adviser to the GLC where some 15 or so scientists work on the problems of specification, quality control, diagnosis of defects and remedial action associated with the GLC programme of new building and estate management. It seems that once designers have experienced the benefits of first hand scientific advice on building problems they become more active and demanding customers and need no further convincing of the benefits of research.

II. A CONCEPTUAL MODEL

There have been a number of conceptual models of architectural design. In putting forward yet another, Dan Lacey's aim is to elucidate the relationship with research. Research is, of course, the source of a good deal of the essential information (including properties of materials, structural strength and stability, external climate, user requirements, consumer protection and mandatory standards) which is needed in architectural design. The conceptual model aims to show the relationships between the essential activities that comprise architectural design and the disciplines upon which they depend. Distinction is made between subject areas that lie very close to the practice of design and those which, despite their yielding data of immediate value to the architect, are remote from the design process per se and are generally a province of the more traditional disciplines. The research output of the individual specialist disciplines, however, is seldom in a form suitable for use by the architect. Interpretation alone of this information would not suffice. Areas of importance to the designer lying between these research outputs and the design process itself remain neglected. Practitioners of the complementary disciplines are not motivated to fill the gaps; practising designers are motivated but not well placed to perform the functions of the architectural scientist. The Development Groups are one means of dealing with this "applications gap". Another, proposed by SRC, is the employment of "building" or "Architectural" scientists as leaders of multi-disciplinary research teams. The use of the computer as a potentially cheap, accurate, rapid and convenient means of retrieving information from the bank of data upon which any design must be based is omitted from the model since the research output from almost all the disciplines listed could be provided in this form. There are, however, areas where the computer can contribute directly to design by deriving specific, perhaps optimised, solutions to, for example, town planning problems, space scheduling, circulation analysis and their attendant internal planning. These are included. The model necessarily consists only of examples. It would lose clarity if the attempt were made to make it comprehensive and is designed to stimulate discussion on the areas of relative ignorance and the kinds of research that may be needed to create the required knowledge. Members of the seminar are invited to consider the model, to seek agreement on the boundaries

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of the area of architectural design research, to judge the degree of expansion of relevant research that is desirable and for which the manpower resources might be available and to express views on how further research in the neglected areas should be pursued. Useful questions to ask in relation to the undertaking of research are who, why, what, and where. So far as research on design and building are concerned it seems to me that the role for the architect is to complete a cycle of innovation. He may participate at every stage—both finding a problem, and contributing to research and development on it—or he may merely ask the questions and discuss and use the answers. He has to ensure the relevance of research. I know of cases where the architect was left out from the cycle, and although much information was amassed and analysed it did not answer any useful question or allow any improvement in building practice. Of course we must look to the scientific disciplines for the fundamental stages —physicists, physical chemists, psychologists, sociologists, systems analysts and statisticians, as well as the architects, engineers and quantity surveyors trained in science.

III AGENCIES

In the light of current political thinking it is wise to state the "why, what and where" of Architectural Design Research. My thesis being that the various components, eg Universities, Research Institutes and Stations, Industry, Private Practice, Local Government and Central Government all have interdependent roles to play in the mechanism of teaching, pure research, development of products and processes, projects and programmes of building and Research and Development for government policy formulation. Universities in general could and should pioneer long range pure research on their own volition, eg invention of penicillin etc. (or was that really done in an obscure back room?). Selected Universities can also be commissioned as centres of excellence to undertake specific research contracts for any of the other bodies in the system. The staff of several universities are linked to Consultant firms which can offer a specialised service in some fields such as model building and analysis, acoustics, machine intelligence or aspects of integrated design. The Research Institutes and Research Stations have their roles to play vis-a-vis the Universities and Industry and customer authorities. Their approach has tended to be traditional and has been bogged down in applied research for the short and medium terms with a minimum of long term fundamental research. I would like to see them adopting a more sophisticated systems approach, taking a leaf out of CES's book, and making a very positive contribution by augmenting their capability with resources in the other components of the system. They also have a vital role to play in the field of determining objective standards free of industrial pressure for the lowest common factor. Industry, both construction and manufacturing, should invest in and commission

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applied research with a view to improving and developing their products and processes competitively, to see greater profitability and bigger shares of the market. Private Practices are commissioned by both Central and Local Government amongst others to execute a variety of building projects. By and large most private practices do not possess much research capability, but they should have enough research appreciation to ensure more accurate interpretation of specific briefs into better projects and to initiate feedback to Development Groups, leading eventually to updated standards.

Building Authorities, be they Central Government Building Departments, Government Agencies or Local Authorities, will have an executive role more suited to short-term research and development in that they have programmes of buildings in the form of specific briefs—interpreting the generalised standards and regulations, produced by Central Government Development Groups, in terms of local needs. Tolerance should be exercised to allow the Hertfordshire type model to flourish, ie, an executive authority where fortuitously the administrators, architects and educators were of like mind and innovation flourished in a fertile ambience.

Central Government Advisory Departments for housing, health and education etc. operate in the R and D field to a variety of depths and time scales in liaison with the executive authorities, research stations and universities; the end product being advice to Ministers on "building development policy" which finds its expression in standards of space, quality and cost together with the size of the annual building programmes in the various fields. Another valuable end product is design guidance which emanates from multi-disciplinary development groups, groups where the skills and administrators, user specialists such as Doctors, Schools Inspectors, Nursing Specialists, Scientists, Housing Managers, Economists etc., are brought together with the building professions in a way that is unique to Central Government. This focus of contribution in context is a truly British invention in the best tradition of constitutional development.

In view of the fact that at a recent RIBA conference the universities made a unilateral bid to be the main research source for the industry I would like to suggest that the true importance of research undertaken by the architectural school lies less in the contribution which it makes to our stock of knowledge than in the extent to which it breeds a race of designers who value, understand and know how to use the resources of science. But none of this I trust will lead us into the mistaken assumption that a theory of architecture exists at present, nor could it exist on the basis of the type of architectural education architects receive at present. The professional institutions, the universities, BRS and the building research institutes, and central and local government development groups will need to work in systematic relationships with each other and with other progressive offices be they private or public to develop the components of a viable theory of architecture which will satisfy designers, users and passers-by alike at a cost which we can afford.

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Over the past three years the Construction Research Advisory Council has been considering the research needs of the construction industry on evidence arising from a series of reviews carried out by the Department of the Environment. These reviews have covered a wide range of topics including engineering services and environmental design, materials and components, economics, maintenance and computer applications. In a report published last October the Council set out its view of its role and work and of the requirements for further work. One of the objects of the report was to stimulate discussion and comment so that the Council could, where necessary, adjust its policies in the light of informed opinion.

IV THE CURRENT SITUATION

At a meeting in 1971 the Council considered various comments on the report and, in particular, the views expressed by the RIBA Research Committee that little attention had so far been given to the needs for research in the field of architectural design. After discussion it was agreed that a meeting of those directly involved in design and research in this field should be held to examine the problem in greater detail and to make recommendations to CRAC. The initial problem in considering the research requirements is to define the scope and content of architectural design itself. The conceptual model referred to above sets Out diagrammatically the range of activities that might be considered in our discussions. We will need to consider the problems arising in the field of architectural design and whether and how research into these can bring improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of the design process and of designers. If research can help, the next stage would be to define the requirements as precisely as possible and to consider where and how the research should be located and managed and what staff and expertise would be required. Finally, if research does lead to worthwhile results of possible practical application, we must ensure that adequate machinery exists to ensure the assimilation of research results into architectural practice. The RIBA Research Committee, the Science Research Council Building Panel, Tom Markus and Geoffrey Broadbent have all recently set out strategies for research in this field.

The RIBA Research Committee

The RIBA itself has not yet formulated a policy for architectural research but its Research Committee has published a paper for discussion. It notes the recent growth in research activity in schools of architecture but is concerned that this research has not been fully effective in influencing design. It suggests this is partly due to the different orientations and goals of designers and researchers and partly to the lack of formal methods of assimilating research results into practice. The Committee suggests two lines of action to make architectural research more effective: the development of stronger links between design and research at all levels, and the development of a conceptual framework for research which would show the relevance of different kinds of

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research' to the professions' primary interest of making the design process easier and cheaper and making the product better. The Committee believes that feedback from buildings should be used to identify the problems appropriate for researchers to solve and that the translation of research results into design tools should be seen as a research task. It considers it essential that more researchers should be involved in building projects and that the "bridge-builders" with interests in both architecture and research should receive more encouragement. To meet the anticipated demand, the Committee sees the need to increase the numbers of suitably orientated and trained architects. For this reason it hopes that a way will be found to permit suitable students to qualify within a research orientated syllabus.

The Science Research Council

The SRC Building Panel has considered its Council's role in supporting university research and teaching in building design (excluding structural engineering) and has produced an interim policy statement. It believes that within the national context, the SRC should give support to basic studies and education and should encourage the development of combined research, education and training centres. For research, the Panel would like to see the development within the Universities of multi-disciplinary teams working on broad programmes in welldefined problem areas. To this end the Panel sees a need to encourage a limited number of research groups with expertise in one area to extend their research interests; to support research programmes of related projects in one centre; and to give priority to institutions having broad-based architectural or building scientists on their permanent staff, who are able to supervise the supported research. In the field of architectural design research, the Panel has singled out as important problem areas for study; communication and information flow, the design of space, user behaviour, the building envelope and design methodology.

Models of the Design Process In his "Building—Environment—Activity—Objectives model", Professor T. A. Markus has set out a conceptual model of the relationships in the building-user system. Simplifying the Markus model a good deal perhaps four main systems are identified:— the building system, the environmental system, the activity system, and the organisational objectives. Design and research activities can be examined and classified according to their relevance to the relationships within a given system or between pairs of systems. Geoffrey H. Broadbent has adapted the Markus model in particular to take account of the external environment (site, climate and surroundings). He identifies three systems (the environment system, the building system and the human system) and views the architect's task as the

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design of a building system to reconcile and interrelate the other two. Broadbent also divides each of these three systems into two sub-systems, as follows

Environmental System Building System Human System

Cultural Physical Building Internal User Client Context Context Technology Ambience Require- Objectives ments

These two models do provide a useful outline of the design process but they do not indicate the relative importance of the various elements in the architectural design task or of areas of research interest. It could be argued that all branches of knowledge are in some senses relevant to architectural design, but given that the designer has only limited time, learning, storage and processing facilities, some order of relevance has to be accepted for practical purposes. This would be improved if an aesthetic system were added of which the sub-systems would be as nearly quantifiable as possible, to enable the whole process to be computer-aided but artistically directed. The most recent comprehensive survey of research for the construction industry is the "Third Survey of Research and Development for the Construction Industry". This classifies and lists projects active in 1968 on the basis of questionnaires returned by the organisations doing the work. (The fourth survey of projects active in 1970, is currently in progress but the results will not become available until later.) Research that was classified in the survey as Architectural Design, Function, Performance accounted for 19.9% (l,406,000) of construction research supported by public funds (Table 1). Nearly 70% of this architectural design research was carried out by government departments. (Table 2). The allocation of this research work between the subject areas used in the survey is shown in Table 3. Some of the research in architectural design active in 1968 was directed to particular types of building. Tables 4 and 5, classify the research undertaken by the type of building to which it was primarily directed where this is known. A large proportion (39%) was related to buildings in general (Col (2) Table 5). Housing research accounted for 24.2% of the research expenditure, a figure which includes 1.6% which was specifically related to older housing and its rehabilitation (Col (2) Table 5). In Col (1) of Tables 4 and 5, the value of new orders obtained by contractors during 1968 for each building type has been given so that these can be compared with the research expenditure in the public sector (see Notes on Tables 4 and 5 no 1). In order to facilitate comparisons of the value of new work with research expenditure on each building type, the research expenditure which is applicable to buildings generally has been allocated to building types in proportion to the value of the orders obtained for that building type. The

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ratio of research expenditure to value of new orders for each building type is given in Col (4) of Table 4. It will be seen that the building types almost exclusively in the public sector have the highest ratios (eg Health with 0.12%) and that those in the private sector have the lowest ratios (eg Shops 0.02%). To some extent this is a reflection of the fact that in the main the tables only refer to research supported by public funds. However, a rough check on the projects in the Third Survey indicated that about 90% of the research expenditure by the private sector was in the building types "housing", "education" and "generally applicable". The ratio of Architectural Design research to the value of new orders was 0.04%. The Survey covers projects current in 1968. The lists of architectural and building research projects supported by the RIBA, the Science Research Council, in the BRS Research Programme 1971 which are attached and of those featured at the RIBA Research Fair at Strathclyde last January, do indicate something of the range of research now in hand. In Table 5 the value of new work and the research expenditure for each building type is shown as a percentage of the totals for all building types. For each building type the difference between the percentage of research effort and the percentage of new orders is tabled in Col (4). Subject to the limitations mentioned above particularly about the likely differences in design complexity for different building types, the figures in Col (4) give an indication of the amounts of research expenditure that would be required to alter the present distribution of research between different building types.

TABLE 1

Distribution of Public Sector Research Expenditure by Subject-1968

Subject Division

Construction Architectural Design Economics Engineering Materials Services I L'000s

305 4.3 1,406 19.9 706 10.0 2,819 39.9 1,300 18.4 527 7.5

Source: DGRD Survey 1968

"Architectural Design research is defined as 'Studies in the design of structures to provide a suitable environment for human use or occupation including the design of components and elements, functional performance and the needs and reactions of users and occupants'."

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TABLE 2

% Distribution of Public Sector Expenditure on Architectural Design Research, by type of organisation-1968

0/ /0

Government Departments 69.8 Educational Establishments 18.5 Other Public Authorities 7.9 Research Associations 3.8

Source: DGRD Survey 1968

TABLE 3

% Distribution by subject sub-classifications of Public Sector Research Expenditure in Architectural Design, Function and Performance 1968

Subject Sub-classification

&0

(000's)

Design of buildings, civil engineering works (includes building systems)

270.1 19.2 Design of components and elements 142.4 10.1 Performance of buildings, civil engineering works and components 125.1 8.9 Dimensions and accuracy (includes resistance to moisture, wind, corrosion) 64.4 4.6 Fire resistance and prevention 85.6 6.1 Health and safety 7.8 0.6 User needs 321.4 22.9 Thermal environment (includes air movement) 65.9 4.7 Lighting and colour 41.4 2.9 Sound 154.0 10.9

Source: DGRD Survey 1968

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TABLE 4

Distribution by Building Type

(i) of Research Expenditure in Architectural Design, Function, Performance 1968

(ii) of the valve of new orders obtained by contractors in 1968

(1) (2) 1 (3) (4)

Building type Research

Expenditure with "Generally Research

New orders

applicable" Expenditure obtained by allocated in as percentage contractors Research proportion to of value of 1968 Expenditure new orders new orders (jjm) (J'OOOs) (J'OOOs) (3)/(1)

Housing

1,258 339 553 0.04 Education, schools 186 106 138 0.07 Education, universities 31 25 30 0.10 Health 140 . 149 173 0.12 Offices 110j 36 55 0.05 Industrial 6781 41 156 0.02 Roads and transport 280 49 97 0.04 Entertainment 1901 35 67 0.04 Shops 1071 0 18 0.02 Other 2411 78 119 0.05 Generally applicable - 549 - -

TOTAL

tEstimate only.

Sources: Annual Bulletin of Construction Statistics 1969 & Third Survey of R & D

3,221 1,406 1,406 0.04

Note: Research expenditure refers only to the sector supported by public funds.

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TABLE 5

% Distribution by Building Type

(i) of Research Expenditure in Architectural Design, Function, Performance 1968

(ii) of the 'value of new orders obtained by contractors 1968 (1) (2) (3) (4)

Building type Research Expenditure with "Generally applicable" allocated in Research proportion to New orders Expenditure new orders Col. (3)- % % % Col. (1)

Housing 39.0 24.2 39.3 +0.3 Education, schools 5.8 7.5 9.8 +4.0 Education, universities 1.0 1.8 2.1 +1.1 Health 4.3 10.6 12.3 +8.0 Offices 3.4 2.6 3.9 +0.5 Industrial 21.0 2.9 11.1 -9.9 Roads and transport 8.7 3.5 6.9 -1.8 Entertainment and culture 5.9 2.5 4.8 -1.1 Shops 3.3 0.0 1.3 -2.0 Other 7.5 5.5 8.5 +1.0 Generally applicable - 39.1 - -

TOTAL 100 100 100

Estimate only.

Sources: Annual Bulletin of Construction Statistics 1969 & Third Survey of R & D Notes: Research expenditure refers only to the sector supported by public funds.

NOTES ON TABLES 4 AND 5 1. Col. (1). New orders obtained by contractors are not a complete representation of all construction work. They exclude repair and maintenance work and work done by direct labour in the public sector. These account for around 30% of output.

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2. Col. (1). In the Construction Statistics figures are not divided into some building types, in the public sector. We have allocated the non-housing work done for public corporations into offices, and industrial building types in the proportions of these two building types in the private sector. The public sector category "offices, garages, factories, shops" has been similarly allocated to the offices, industrial and shops building types.

Summary

The Lacey conceptual model sets out the chief activities relevant to a contemporary design in such a way as to show the closeness of their relevance. He thus defines design in terms of the influences bearing upon it—social, economic, technical, physical, and so on. The model is set out in 2 dimensions. That from left to right indicates the relevance to design of various subjects, proceeding from basic applied research on the left, to development, design and its execution, and, finally, analysis of building on the right. In the vertical direction the model extends from broad urban scale at the top, to detailed design and production information at the foot of the page. The agencies for research listed range from universities, through BRS, executive building departments to central government research and development groups and suggests that each in turn has a role to play in the systematic cycle of products, processes, projects and policy formulation; all of which are interdependent. Other interdependent sub-systems covered include pure research in related fields, applications, development, testing, construction, evaluation and feedback etc. The aim is to ensure that the various components are systematically related to each other and that they work in the appropriate fields with clearly defined objectives. The review of the current situation refers to a definition of design as an integration of several systems, for instance, a human system, an environmental system and a building system (to which should be added an aesthetic system), so showing the possibility of a computerised systems approach to the various items set out in the conceptual model. These two definitions to present the content of architectural design in a structured way, and, continuing from here, an architectural design research programme could be planned as a whole, probing deeper where the subject most closely affects design, and avoiding the present fragmented list of unrelated subjects. The paper presents two tables Nos. 1 and 3, which deal with the subject matter of research and development, but these tables group the information differently from the headings suggested in the conceptual model. Moreover, the tables do not distinguish between research and development and the latter has a high cost for some types of building, relative to research, so that as the information is in the form of costs it cannot give a clear picture of the distribution of work between various building types. A more detailed analysis of the survey material available from the forthcoming 1970 Report is necessary. Indeed, it may transpire that as Table 1 shows, the expenditure on architectural design research is adequate at present, but Table 3 suggests that it is ill-distributed.

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