Architectural Practice as Research: Framed by Abduction

The paper discusses a kind of research which lies between ‘research by design’ and ‘artistic research’. The term ‘research by design’ is reconstructed to include artistic ways of working, and the paper is an exemplification of a research practice, which seeks to let subjective and objective, qualitative and quantitative, scientific and artistic methods pollinate each other, and an attempt to set up a span for ‘research by design’ to unfold in, rather than a rigid definition.
In mutual exploitation architectural writing, drawing and potentially the construction of objects with properties embodied in them, is the very research. This approach is framed by Deleuze’s reading of Bergson’s intuitive method and Peirce’s concept abduction, both methods which concern creative processes, material production and organisation, and the breakthrough of novelty.