Design and Method in Architectural Research: From Objective Quantification to Material Speculation

This issue of SPOOL introduces a new thread: ‘Method and Design’, titled “Design and Method in Architectural Research: From Objective Quantification to Material Speculation”. The issue explores the conventional understanding of method through both theoretical contributions and visual essays. The theoretical contributions discuss methodology, material practice, studio approaches, or design principles. The visual essays are more experimental, allowing for design proposals or artistic expressions that explore specific methods, depict scenarios, or articulate a material logic

Untangling Stakeholder Dynamics in Circularity of the Built Environment: A Comics-Based Approach

Comics are a known method to visually link characters to context through time. This article explores the medium of comics to untangle stakeholder dynamics in the context of a complex theme such as circularity of the built environment. Circularity of the built environment tailors concepts of circular economy to the field of construction and urban development. Relying mostly on optimization strategies, context-specific characteristics such as stakeholder agency and spatial preconditions are often disregarded as resources in the design of circularity projects. This results in one-size-fits all circularity instruments formalized in generic toolboxes. Circularity instruments should additionally engage with stakeholders, recognizing complexity and surfacing the resourcefulness of the territory. This comics series follows the researcher from analysis to design hypothesis, clarifying complexity at hand from the researcher perspective, including stakeholder agendas, spatial conditions, barriers and opportunities. Part of an ongoing action-research project, the self-reflective comics show parts of a researcher’s journey untangling circularity in the built environment in its multiple stakeholder dimensions. It includes data sourced from mixed method research, such as ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and archival research on two Flemish industry parks, Kortrijk-Noord and Leuven-Haasrode. These comics function as a narrative assemblage method for critical analysis, bringing together different data sources, and rendering our research process on circularity contextual and visual. Additionally, the comic allows us to communicate, challenge, and begin to design with (hidden) stakeholder agency

On Dreaming Realities: Cultural critique, design speculation and full-scale mock-ups

This essay delves into the installation designed by Hans Hollein for the Künstlerhaus facade in Vienna in 1985. It serves as an illustrative case of material speculation in architecture, particularly regarding the incorporation of ‘historical’ elements in contemporary architectural practice. Through a close reading of this installation, realized in the context of the exhibition ‘Traum und Wirklichkeit, Wien 1870-1930’ (Dream and Reality, Vienna 1870-1930), I discuss how such speculation entails the physical replication of carefully chosen ‘historical’ forms and their reassembly in what would be best described as a ‘fragmentary whole.’ However, the reintegration of historical fragments into the present can manifest in diverse ways. I argue that in the installation that reshaped the facade of the Künstlerhaus, Hollein explored two contrasting modes while tracing the possibilities (and pitfalls) of their synthesis

Retrieving landscape: Drawing(s) as key to the development of alternative biographical readings of Nanhai in the Pearl River Delta

This article focuses on two methods employed in the selection, interpretation, and representation of diverse source materials for developing alternative biographies for my ancestral landscape - Nanhai district in the Pearl River Delta in southern China. These biographies aim to approach Nanhai from a long view of continual transformation, as opposed to prevalent readings of the region that focus on the striking spatial contrasts and large-scale developments that have only come about in recent decades.  The chronological reading explores a critical shift in the cosmological understanding of the landscape situated in the 19th century through a selection of historical gazetteer maps, while in the excavational reading the diffuse continuity of the lineage in the present-day landscape of Nanhai is traced. In both methods, the drawing functions as a crucial (research) tool to engage the range of source materials

Artistic Practices as Architectural Research

The potential of implicit architectural knowledge extends beyond the realm of sciences and technology. It is worthwhile to examine its role in art, artistic practices, and artistic knowledge. This article explores several practical examples from art and architecture, spanning the 20th and 21st centuries. These examples shed light on artistic practices that, apart from enhancing designerly qualities and fostering a reflexive approach, may have a significant research impact in architecture. The methods, processes, and topics of these examples are examined, and their potential for critical improvement is highlighted. Particularly, the concept of ‘not-knowing’ is emphasized as a valuable asset for addressing contemporary and future challenges, not limited to architecture

Design of Co-creation in Rotterdam Central Station (1996-2007): Architecture and urban design roles in the multi-stakeholder collaboration

This article explores the pivotal role of design as a decision-making tool within multi-stakeholder collaborations, focusing on the early phases of the Rotterdam Central Railway Station and its surroundings project. Spanning from 1996, when it gained National Key Project status, to 2007, when construction commenced, this period precedes the preliminary design, during which the design process becomes the primary method of collaboration among multiple stakeholders, including designers and clients involved in the station area’s development. After introducing the post-war reconstruction of the station area and the ‘Platform Zero’ experiment, this article defines three key stages of design in the initial phase, each of which left a distinct mark on the station project. These stages are: - From 1996 to 2001: Design for political communication. - From 2002 to 2004: Parallel design. - From 2004 to 2007: Design co-creation and integration. To provide a comprehensive view of the design’s development, this article includes insights from conversations with architects and planners engaged in the process. In a dynamic exchange between various stakeholders and designers, the evolution of Rotterdam Central Station’s design reveals how political decisions have been informed by thorough design studies, offering a platform for robust discourse on critical issues

Collective data-based drawings: A common ground for adaptive contributive design

The laboratory ALICE (Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) advances a comprehensive approach to data-based drawing oriented towards architectural and urban co-design processes. This drawing methodology has been key in the contributive design process they have applied over the last seven years, covering a range of scales and contexts, both within the public and private spheres.  Contribution has become a relational strategy that unites a diverse range of participants, each hailing from various backgrounds and carrying unique needs, which come together around the drawing. For this reason, the cultivation of a robust drawing culture, from their teaching to their research and design activities, has become a cornerstone of ALICE’s philosophy, where drawing is embraced not merely as a representational tool but as a constructive means for design work. Their methodology has now evolved to include data-based drawing techniques, skillfully merging precise surveying with qualitative data analysis, thereby bridging the gap between quantitative and qualitative facets of design. This article explains this data-based approach to drawing through a series of projects developed in the Greater Geneva region. Throughout them, they explain how ALICE’s situated data-based drawings facilitate intricate coordination among students, leading to real-scale interventions; explore the potential of transforming main roads into landscape infrastructures that promote sustainable mobility and urban development; or offer an innovative lens to comprehend the affective connections between citizens and their urban surroundings, transcending traditional cartographic representations. Finally, these efforts are summarised through the analysis of a single drawing showcased at the 2021 Venice Biennale, illustrating the potential of this methodology to harmonize the collective efforts of various stakeholders

Design against Extinction at New York University

This article reviews the eco-social design work of students at the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University over the last decade. Environmental justice movements and the effects of global warming pose significant challenges to the architecture of dwellings, landscapes, and urban design communities. In response, students have placed socially and ecologically sensitive projects at the center of their design education. The justifiable moral outrage of our students has prompted us and them to rethink the methods by which we teach and imagine social environmentalism from the perspective of equity, inclusion, and the biosphere

On File and As Files: Tracing Communicative Processes in the Byker Archive

In this paper, we piece together threads of communicative processes between residents, architects, and other parties, as found in the lists and letters of the archive of the Byker Redevelopment in Newcastle Upon Tyne (1968-83). Documents that are usually discarded or neglected by architectural researchers - from a stack of various papers documenting residents’ lists of complaints, evaluative papers such as an audit report, and architects’ memos, to a resident’s letter of complaint - enable us to reconstruct, first, how a mainstream practice collected and filed residents’ experiences and understanding of their homes, and second, how, through the circulation of those papers in action as files, residents’ notes were also embedded in the design process

Reimagining Humanity

‘Faced with inevitable collapse, leading scientists used some of the industrial world’s last remaining technological and energy resources to design and provide an AI bot for selected people on the planet.’’ The following short fiction story explores the next version of human settlement after the collapse of this one, as predicted by Bendell’s research into ‘Deep Adaptation’ (Bendell, 2020). Dr. Bendell warns us that, unless we find ways to radically change our lifestyle, ‘human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. Such disruptions include increased levels of malnutrition, starvation, disease, civil conflict and war – and will not avoid affluent nations.’ Through this story, we illustrate the idea that a societal collapse may actually be what humanity, and most certainly what the earth, needs