Doctoral Project
Academicized Architecture: Politics and Practices of “Design Research”

Doctoral Project
Bernhard Boehm
Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung
 

Academicized Architecture: Politics and Practices of “Design Research”

Until recently, university-based architecture was regarded as a discipline with professionally oriented design education at its core. Architectural research was conducted in fields such as the social and engineering sciences. However, since the 1990s, more and more architects have begun conducting “design research,”and a growing number of Master’s and Ph.D.programs offer research-based design education.
Read against this background, this project ethnographically examines cultures of design research in architecture in the USA and UK. The aim is to compare how design research is practiced and taught at different schools. The project further asks how such research cultures are related to academic policy making. Studying this political dimension is imperative, because design research is gaining attention in the context of a growing economization of western universities, one characterized by the creation of markets for science, in which high research outputs are viewed as a competitive advantage.