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Design Research in Architecture: An Overview, FraserMurray Ashgate

Publishing, Farnham, UK (2013), 265 pp., ISBN: 9781409462170

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Book Review
Design Research in Architecture: An Overview
Fraser Murray (ed.). Farnham, UK: Ashgate
Publishing, 2013,. 265 pp., ISBN: 9781409462170
The title on the spine of this book is likely to
encourage readers of Design Studies to pull it
down from the shelf. If so it might make for a sur-
prising and probably frustrating read. As early as
the first chapter readers are warned that the
Design Research Society ‘offers too narrow a
focus to be of much relevance to them’. Indeed
those who publish in this journal will find virtu-
ally none of their work discussed here. One
author (it is an edited volume), Philip Steadman,
at least mentions ‘design methods’ and surely he
must be well aware that things have moved on
from Jones, Alexander and Simon but they
remain his focus and become straw men easily
blown over when viewed through the lens of cur-
rent understanding.
For some in the field of architecture the phrase
‘design research’ has taken on a specific and
restrictive meaning during the last decade. Here
design research refers more to the notion that
designing can be seen as a special way of con-
ducting research. In many ways this can be seen
as a response to the UK government Research
Assessment Exercises (RAE) that began in the
last decade of the twentieth century. These assess-
ments continue to the present day and spread
around the world like some virulent disease. In
recent years I have been helping schools of archi-
tecture as far away as Hong Kong, Singapore and
Australia to prepare for their own mutations. The
RAE remains a potent force in framing the way
research is conducted and published.
It is no surprise that this redefinition of design
research has emanated from architecture. Many
of the best UK schools of architecture are in
www.elsevier.com/locate/destud
0142-694X Design Studies 36 (2015) 125e130
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2014.11.002
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
universities that expected, and indeed needed, to
get high RAE ratings. By comparison industrial
design in the UK had grown up mostly in the
old art colleges, transformed into polytechnics
and later into universities, and initially at least
many were under less pressure to demonstrate
they did research.
So design research in architecture has now been
redefined as largely what architectural academics
do. This book is presented as an overview to a
whole series mostly written by members of the
Bartlett School at University College, London.
In fact the arguments about whether one can do
research by designing are just as valid in the other
design fields but readers will find this book is
almost exclusively about architecture.
It is worth taking a step or two back to frame the
argument as we might more normally find it in the
pages of this journal. When the Design Research
Society came into being back in 1966 it was
founded for ‘the study of and research into the
process of designing’. We have come a long way
since then and the level of understanding of this
most fascinating of human abilities, enabling us
to imagine and engineer new worlds, is now infi-
nitely richer than it was in the days of the pio-
neers. Much of the work of the sixties is now
easily lampooned as having too limited a focus.
Often good research proceeds first by narrowing
down before relaxing on the luxury of a broader
canvas. Anyone who has supervised a doctoral
student will be all too familiar with this process.
Today there are, thankfully, many ways of seeing
design. This journal allows us to contrast and
compare and very often to find out we are saying
similar things with different words, indeed some-
times with the different dialects that our respec-
tive design or research fields spawn. There are
125
now many widely shared fundamental features of
designing often expressed in these pages. Among
them are a couple I have often discussed and
which are relevant to the argument here. We
now view design as a process that is often
solution-focussed and one in which problems
and solutions emerge together. One of the most
commonly used ideas here is that first proposed
by Jane Darke when she was preparing her
doctorate under my supervision. She brilliantly
summed up a phenomenon with the term ‘pri-
mary generator’ (Darke, 1978). For those readers
not familiar with her work, Jane showed that the
architects she studied when designing large-scale
public housing schemes often proposed some
design form very early in the process. They
explored this by designing and, through the
discovered failures or successes of their ideas,
not only began to change their design but also
to understand more about the problems they
addressed.
Some years later Nigel Cross and I became con-
cerned that so much of our empirical work used
students as subjects. We were fortunate by then
to be in a position to study a number of
outstanding designers. To this day my computer
is littered with folders of material under the un-
fortunate heading of SODs (Studying
Outstanding Designers) (Cross & Lawson,
2005). The designers from several fields that we
studied showed many differences in their process
but also many common features. One of the
most striking of the latter was the way world-
renowned architects had a programme of on-
going work that transcended the individual
design projects (Lawson, 1994). The content of
these programmes varied enormously. For San-
tiago Calatrava it was a series of issues about
structural form. For Herman Hertzberger it was
a people-centred agenda with a focus on how
users could take possession of space. For Bob
Venturi it was much more about form and style.
For Ken Yeang it was about how to build sustain-
ably in tropical climates. I was lucky enough to
126
persuade Ken to act as a visiting professor at
Sheffield and it was noticeable how each year
his programme had moved forward. Every
visiting lecture showed more understanding,
became more specific and raised new problems
to work on. One could really only describe these
as research programmes, and they were largely
developed through the act of designing. In fact
Ken’s lectures were exactly the kind of research-
led teaching that the university sees as its mission
to deliver. It is just that someone who would
describe himself as a practitioner delivered this
lecture.
I called these programmes ‘guiding principles’
and observed how often in individual design pro-
jects the ‘primary generators’ these architects
used had grown out of their ‘guiding principles’.
In short we can see a two-way interaction here.
The guiding principles help to frame the primary
generators and the feedback from the project
further informs the guiding principles. This could
be called research through design. There is by
now surely no argument that such a phenomenon
exists. It is perhaps particularly prevalent in the
work of well-known designers who are more
often able to attract clients who are sympathetic
to their programme. Many such designers, espe-
cially architects, also write about their work in a
way that looks more like conventional research
publishing.
Many of the chapters in this book plough this
furrow in all but name. We are familiar with
such a format that runs along these lines. ‘This
is what I am interested in and here are some pieces
of architecture that can be seen as exploring those
ideas.’ While this is interesting in its own right the
book lacks the sort of structure and organisation
of themes that one might expect from ‘an over-
view’. In truth the post-modern and post-critical
world inhabited by much of the writing here sug-
gests that the authors might see a lack of structure
as inherently desirable. Certainly the editor
explicitly takes such a position in his
Design Studies Vol 36 No. C January 2015
introduction. This argument is of course defen-
sible but difficult to engage with in what we might
think of as a research environment.
The intellectual game played by many of the au-
thors of this book is to generate design work
that affords multiple interpretations. Much of
the text is also devoted to exhorting the reader
to see things in alternative ways. This can some-
times lead to sentences, or indeed whole para-
graphs, that could easily be submitted by the
unkind reader to the Pseuds Corner section of
the British satirical magazine Private Eye. The
chapters by Jane Rendell and Katja Grillner are
particularly rich in veins to be mined by those
with such a predilection. This however would be
to miss an important point of interest to those
who study design processes. Another commonly
accepted characteristic of design thinking is to
take our precedents or references and frame
them or our understanding of the problem in
new and alternative ways in order to progress
the design. This is seen as at the root of much
of what we mean by creativity in design and there
is much published research about such ideas. Any
activity therefore that seeks to encourage or
develop such flexible and creative ways of
thinking should be applauded by both teachers
and students of designing. In this book however
such activity is more often seen as an end in itself
rather than a means to an end.
When discussing such ideas it is almost impos-
sible not to refer to the excellent argument about
design precedent developed by Gabi Goldschmidt
(Goldschmidt, 1998). She argues very persua-
sively that the use of the word ‘precedent’ is
misleading since it suggests an analogy with the
legal arguments that seek to show how closely a
preceding case resembles the one under consider-
ation. In contrast, she argues, designers
frequently seek a creative interpretation of the
precedent in a new context and are hardly, if at
all concerned with the degree of similarity. So,
the argument continues, we should more
Book Review
appropriately use the word ‘reference’. Gold-
schmidt’s paper is just the sort of argued analysis
that is largely missing from Design Research in
Architecture. In what ways does designing repre-
sent research and in what ways are such analogies
misleading? When, if at all, can designing be said
not to be research? Those seeking such a discus-
sion may find this book very frustrating indeed.
I have also reprised these few ideas about
designing here because one might expect them
to be referred to if only for disagreement in a
book about design research. There are in fact
almost no references to the literature on
designing. Apparently we have a tabula rasa of
the kind that one would instantly query in the
work of a doctoral research student.
For example, Grillner, although she provides one
of the most thought provoking and stimulating
chapters, constantly leaves this reader genuinely
frustrated by her failure to acknowledge any pre-
vious similar work. Among other things she de-
scribes a social designing environment that she
calls a ‘salon’. Perhaps ‘discusses’ might be a
more accurate verb here, since the description
lacks the detail that would be needed even
approximately to replicate her events. We are
left in no doubt that these events are very care-
fully prepared and structured. She describes
one, ‘The Garden of Incompatible Modalities’,
in more detail. There were prepared stimulants
in the form of two ‘experts’ with both visual
and auditory events as well as the all-important
lunch. Now such a concept follows a very long
line of such ideas. Readers of Design Studies
will be entirely familiar with the idea of preparing
and structuring a group-design event. There are
countless references we could call on to review
and compare the many features that have been
proposed. We could also find many carefully eval-
uated events as well as extensive literature on the
strengths and weaknesses of different methods of
documenting and analysing group design situa-
tions. All of the techniques we currently have
for these tasks are flawed and inadequate. So
127
knowing what actually happened, what was in-
tended and what might be inferred are extraordi-
narily difficult in terms of research methodology.
Even the obvious method of asking designers to
tell us what they are doing is fraught with danger
(Lloyd, Lawson, & Scott, 1996). Again these is-
sues are hardly mentioned in this book and we
are often just expected to take the authors’ de-
scriptions as read. One of the elements of a work-
ing definition of research that I hold dear is that it
should be presented in such as manner as to
enable readers to assess its value for themselves.
To do that we need far more information about
exactly how the events and processes described
in this book were conducted.
As for the Garden of Incompatible Modalities we
are told that this was ‘an ephemeral event’. It
seems quite likely that the participants found it
rewarding and that it may have significantly
contributed to their personal development but
does this account add up to a piece of research?
We are given no samples of design output nor is
there any discussion of how to capture and thus
explore such events. Presumably we are told
about this event because the author thinks that
in some ways it broke new ground in a productive
way and that others can learn from it. But no
criteria are even discussed that would allow us
to examine this proposition. Such a presentation
has to be seen in the light of the post-critical
stance of the author but it still leaves the reader
unable to either assess the ideas or try them out
for themselves. Surely these two missing features
are hallmarks of what we generally think of as
good research?
So what exactly is meant by design research in the
title of this book? The editor, Murray Fraser, and
Johan Verbeke perhaps come closest to defining
this. Verbeke’s chapter is encouragingly called
‘this is research by design’ and it certainly at-
tempts to deal with this question. His use of
‘artistic research’ and ‘design research’ inter-
changeably clouds the argument, this without
128
explaining or defending the position. It does at
the very least seem debateable! Throughout the
book, just as you feel you might be getting a
handle on it one author or another appears to
muddy the waters again. Several writers use the
phrase ‘architectural research’ interchangeably
with ‘design research’. Are they to be seen as
one and the same thing? Or perhaps they are over-
lapping or one a subset of the other, or perhaps
they are separate and distinct concepts. Such
questions are never really addressed here.
Several authors assert that design research can be
done either by designing or by writing. This begs
a question as to when written architectural
research should be thought of as design research.
It also begs an even more fundamental question
as to when designing should also be thought of
as researching. I discussed these questions some
years ago in relation to the demands of the
research assessment exercise. I defended the idea
that some design is so significant in the way it
moves the subject on that it needs to be thought
of as embodying the new knowledge in itself
without necessarily the need to write, analyse
and explain. This of course in turn offers the
added advantage of making this knowledge avail-
able in what Nigel Cross has so delightfully
termed a ‘designerly way of knowing’ (Cross,
1982). This is most easily illustrated by reference
to my work mentioned earlier. Ken Yeang has
not only designed but also written papers and
books. Santiago Calatrava by contrast does not
normally write about his work. I have written pa-
pers about Calatrava, so in classical terms I have
done research and he has not. This is of course
absurd as his contribution to knowledge is far
greater than mine. Murray Fraser, in his intro-
duction to Design Research in Architecture, tells
us ‘there seems no real argument any more that
design research in architecture exists’. I would
go further. There never has been such an argu-
ment, neither is it necessary to add the qualifica-
tion ‘in architecture’ here. I have argued
elsewhere and again here that design is
Design Studies Vol 36 No. C January 2015
undoubtedly an important way of contributing to
knowledge and understanding. Even the first
output-led Research Assessment Exercise in
2001 specifically referred to ‘including design’ in
its definition of research.
But, while accepting this, designers cannot
exempt themselves from arguments about when
and how design makes good research. Who
should judge a piece of design to be research
and how? How can we tell if it is good research
or not? Most particularly how is the reader to
assess its value for themselves? Since this value
may only be apparent in designerly terms we are
in danger of creating an awfully self-reflective
field. It is not surprising then that architects are
often accused of addressing each other rather
than their clients or users. This may be an unfair
caricature but it has not arisen without some
cause. In the case of this book it leaves scholars
from other backgrounds floundering in a sea of
confusion and even obfuscation. An experienced
researcher from another field wanting to under-
stand how design could be research will find little
or no help in this book.
There are many confusions and contradictions if
one takes this book as a whole. On the cover we
are told it is ‘an overview’ but inside the editor de-
scribes it as a ‘taster or sampler’. These two are
not the same and the latter would be less
demanding in rigour and organisation than the
former. The latter is probably the more accurate
description. The editor defends the lack of struc-
ture and analysis on the grounds of the immatu-
rity of the field and yet one author, Jonathan
Hill, discusses ‘Design Research: The First 500
Years’. There is looseness too in the preparation
of the book. It is not difficult to find a curiously
phrased sentence, a missing word, a misspelt
name or missing reference details. There is no
overall list of references, nor even one at the
conclusion of each chapter. So to track down a
half remembered reference one must search the
whole book looking for the ends of each chapter
Book Review
and then scanning many pages of notes in which
are buried the references. While these are not
fundamental flaws, the editor does not make it
easy for other researchers to use this volume.
This can be seen as at best discourteous and at
worst simply careless towards the progression of
research and tends to leave the questioning reader
suspicious about the real objectives of the book.
The series for which this book serves as an over-
view is trumpeted on the cover as providing ‘a
forum where the best proponents of architectural
design research can publish their work’. Unfortu-
nately the book gives us no help in deciding how
one might judge who is good, never mind best, in
the field. It is difficult to see how we can do that
without raising questions of techniques of docu-
mentation, criteria of success and methods of
measurement. The authors seem constantly to
set their face against such forms of enquiry. But
surely you cannot describe some people as ‘the
best’ and resist any attempt to establish criteria
against which to test the claim.
This is certainly an interesting and stimulating
read and it offers a fascinating glimpse of the per-
sonal development of many of its authors. It rep-
resents a strong set of beliefs that design and
research can be intertwined but it remains
confused and muddled about the central ques-
tions. It is a shame the authors feel the need to
focus exclusively on architecture. At times one
gets the feeling that this book is really about ar-
chitecture and ways of seeing and promoting it
rather than about either design or research. Un-
fortunately the total result is a confusing mish-
mash that is insufficiently disciplined and
rigorous to further progress research in design.
Our understanding of design and the way design
can contribute to knowledge are central concerns
of the design research community. A bridge be-
tween that set of enquiries and the interests of
the authors of this book could advance research.
The question is could such a bridge be engineered
and how? It might take some effort!
129
 References
Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing.
Design Studies, 3, 221e227.
Cross, N., & Lawson, B. R. (2005). Studying
outstanding designers. In J. S. Gero, &
N. Bonnardel (Eds.), Studying Designers (pp.
283e287). Sydney: University of Sydney.
Darke, J. (1978). The primary generator and the
design process. In W. E. Rogers, &
W. H. Ittleson (Eds.), New Directions in Environ-
mental Design Research: Proceedings of EDRA 9
(pp. 325e337). Washington: EDRA.
130
View publication stats
Goldschmidt, G. (1998). Creative architectural
design: reference versus precedence. Journal of
Architectural and Planning Research, 15, 258e270.
Lawson, B. R. (1994). Design in Mind. Oxford: But-
terworth Architecture.
Lloyd, P., Lawson, B., & Scott, P. (1996). Can con-
current verbalisation reveal design cognition? In
N. Cross, H. Christiaans, & K. Dorst (Eds.), An-
alysing Design Activity (pp. 437e463) Chiches-
ter: Wiley.
Bryan Lawson
Design Studies Vol 36 No. C January 2015