Design Research through Construction: Enabling a New Professional Culture

Abstract

In conventional architectural practices the scope of academic engagement into design-research encounters a disjunction, as the processes tend to differ for distinct interest groups, students and clients, which ultimately expose the prevailing gap between architectural education and practice. In professional culture, the process of design and constructing a building mostly follows a linear structure that neglects the fact that the decision of a spatial design is highly project specific that demands a design-research based on physical making. This paper provokes the question, how a new professional culture based on design-research can be established where construction is incorporated as a design-tool rather than keeping it as a post design act yet acknowledged in todays‟ architectural practices? Making prototypes can inform a design process much rationally which ultimately can lead a project towards an „evidence-based‟ design-research. The paper will first evaluate evidences drawn from few experiments in academic context, examining the changes in architectural production, explored during visits in ETH Zurich and ICD Stuttgart. Next a comparison of such praxis shall be examined by critically viewing to the evidence-based work-process of Bijoy Jain/Studio Mumbai Architects. Through the comparative analyses on both the academic and practice models, the paper will attempt to argue that, in a proper architectural inquiry, making prototypes can play an essential role in informing a design process and eventually can encourage clients to participate in design investigations that allow construction stage to inform the design.