Research by Design - a Research and Teaching Concept.

Abstract.
Interweaving research and design-based architectural education is an important effort in most architect schools. All good design is informed by some kind of research – research-based design. And all architect schools involve research in their teaching – research based education. Research by design concerns the various ways in which design and research are generally interconnected producing new knowledge through the act of designing. This paper discusses the role and importance of research by design as part of architectural knowledge production and education. The paper seeks to understand models in which architectural theory emerges from a direct engagement in practice and proposes that the manifestos and writings of Le Corbusier, exemplified by his theorisation of “The 5 Points for a New Architecture” can be seen as theory-building based on practical experiments and parallel to research by design. The paper asks how “the new” in architectural production emerges and aims to find similarities between the tradition of practice based proposals and theorisation, and our own research and teaching practice. Grounded in this practice the paper investigates how research by design contributes to the construction of knowledge and student’s learning outcomes through research led workshops. The paper presents research inquiries, results and methodologies of two parallel research workshops and discusses the format by which this research tool is developed.


Keywords: Research by Design, practice-based research, material-based research, tradition of writing in architecture, The 5 Point for a New Architecture, the research workshop.