Grounded Theory as method; Exhibition Design as mean

The modes of production within architectural practices have been widely investigated in the field of “Architecture and Labour” in particular considering the relationship between the economic system and the transformation of the workflows. The methods favored by scholars are mainly qualitative: archival research, case study, grounded theory and ethnography (Cuff, 1991; Yaneva, 2009). However, the focus in the content has not been on the Danish Welfare State and in its relationship with the architectural profession.

This contribution, in the form of an exhibition and an accompanying paper, addresses this gap and considers how some junctures in the economy of Denmark played a role in the definition of the modes of architectural production and its labor organization in the last twenty years (1990-2017).

As part of my ongoing Ph.D. research, the presentation has to be framed in a narrative I am deploying to disseminate architectural research contents through exhibition design. Another part of the study, in fact, was presented as invited contribution at the Milan Design Week 2017 where it visualized, with a circular physical archive of nearly 4000 projects, the production of Danish architects in the Golden Years (1945-75).

Specifically, in the paper, I am looking to some paradigmatic data, collected with a grounded theory method. The data are both the ones deriving from an interpretative analysis of 234 Danish active architectural practices based on their self-statement description; the ones related to 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews made to the directors of some of the Danish architectural offices selected as representative cases during the research.

My argument regarding the content is that the Danish Welfare State in its Golden Years was a booster for the blossoming of the architectural profession. But, its transformation and instability (e.g., with two financial crises in the early 90s and again in 2008) weakened its oversight and played a substantive role in the change of the strategies used by the architectural practices to produce architecture.

In conclusion, the interaction of theoretical arguments together with the design of an exhibition, and therefore the occupancy of a physical space along with a facilitate interaction with a broad audience, are powerful experimental fields when doing research in architecture.