Introduction
On Doing Architectural Research
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Before we set out on the investigation and construction of embedded spaces, I would like to raise some essential questions: Is architectural research unique – is architectural research based on an autonomous epistemology? Is there an internal structure or theoretical system that sets up certain frames for the production of knowledge within the field of architecture? Finally, is that structure comparable to the structures in other scientific areas?
Of course this is not an either/or situation, but instead a rather mixed enterprise. On the one hand we could argue that architecture never can be guided by scientific structures since architecture, like arts in general, is non-linear, anarchistic, unpredictable and unable to be redone by others. On the other hand, we could argue that the production of knowledge in architecture does indeed follow specific – even scholastic – structures just as many other areas, and that these structures may be studied, developed, and tested in a scientific manner. One way to approach this question is to look at the way knowledge is produced in architecture, and how it relates to a traditional view on scientific methods.
Normal ScienceWe may turn to the structures of scientific revolutions as the historian of science Thomas Kuhn laid them out in 1962. Kuhn’s offset was a critique of how science was conducted as the accumulation of facts that confirmed already well-established theories – a critique that is still valid some 40 years later. He writes: “If science is the constellation of facts, theories, and methods collected in current texts, then scientists are the men who, successfully or not, have striven to contribute one or another element to that particular constellation.”(1) According to Kuhn, such a constellation or paradigm is a normality of science in which every scientific activity is conducted as a normal science. In normal science, there is no wish for novelty since it would just show that the scientific constellation is just that – a construction, and not an undisputable truism. Instead, there is a well-established set of questions to be asked, and a specific frame within which, the questions may be answered – an activity that in Kuhn’s terminology is called puzzle solving. Nothing outside the norm of normal science is science.
Yet, that is not always the case. Kuhn argues that the real progress in science is produced, when there is a crisis in the normal science, which is profound enough to cause a revolution or a shift in the theoretical paradigm. Such a shift is not to be taken lightly; it is battle in which one paradigm is discarded and replaced by another. It is a shift that will forever change the way we think, and it marks the time, when the construction of an entirely new scientific structure or disciplinary matrix(2) will begin. The new paradigm defines the structure for a new normal science, in which there is no room for the old paradigm; there can be no ‘pockets’ or special circumstances where the old paradigm can be justified – the old paradigm is both incomparable and incommensurable(3) to the new, and is as such no longer valid.
Kuhn’s critique is harsh, but it offers a clear picture of the battles within science, and furthermore it offers us a scientific structure against which, we can discuss architectural research. It should come as no surprise that architectural research has its own norms, battles and institutions. Architecture may indeed be well pruned for normality; the scholastic practice of master and pupil is one of the most efficient ways to ensure normality. Such a normality may stem from individuals like Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman, organizations like Anyone Corporation and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, magazines like Assemblage, Archis, and Architecture+Urbanism, and by the avant-garde architectural schools in Europe and the United States.(4) However, even though architectural research may have a normality of its own, does it then follow the structures of normal science and shifts in paradigm, and if so, is architectural research then puzzle solving or novelty?
Mechanical Nostalgia and Critical ScienceA central issue for a possible autonomous epistemology for architecture is, whether the production of knowledge has the structure of a scientific revolution or a scientific evolution? We could ask, whether new knowledge and understanding does cause architects to reject the old paradigms entirely and define new ones or to just add new aspects to old well-founded paradigms? This is important for the investigations into embedded spaces and especially to the definition of scientific methods in architecture – namely, whether the production of knowledge is critical or not, and if so, what it is critical of? The need for a critical approach is, however, a crucial concern in science and is emphasized in Albert Einstein’s foreword from 1953 to Max Jammer’s book on space in physical science:
… in the interests of science it is necessary over and over again to engage in the critique of these fundamental concepts (of space), in order that we may not unconsciously be ruled by them. This becomes evident especially in those situations involving development of ideas in which the consistent use of the traditional fundamental concepts leads us to paradoxes difficult to resolve.(5)
That such an approach may be difficult in architecture – or at least in an architectural practice – became evident in one of the panel discussions at the 1999 AnyMore conference in Paris, where the architect Peter Eisenman made the argument that such a critical practice was impossible. He stated: “Where architecture, I think, differs from the other visual arts is that no client I know is going to hire an architect to produce a critical project, that is, to produce a project of negativity about either their being or their corporation. Therefore, how is it possible to build a critical project in architecture when this is precisely what clients are not interested in?”(6) Eisenman goes on and argues that a critical project would cause “the sudden collapse of media into the spectacle”.(7) He states that in the end all architectural ideas, critical or not, will be trivialized as a spectacle, when the strong autonomous position of the media (architecture) collapses. As such Eisenman argues first, that there is a difference between architectural theory and architectural practice, and second, that a critical project in practice is impossible. If we accept this impossibility of a critical project in practice,(8) how is it then at all possible to produce architectural theory?
If we stay with Peter Eisenman a little while longer, we could use the text “Visions’ Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media” from 1992(9) as a good case of architectural research. In the text, Eisenman writes that the shift from a mechanical to an electronic paradigm had largely been ignored in architecture, and that the shift would have crucial influence on the way that architects conceive of, work with and produce space. Nevertheless, the shift in paradigm that Eisenman describes, does not involve a resolute rejection of the mechanical paradigm of space with all its mechanical representations, visual promenades and optical perspectives. Rather the shift in paradigm is an addition of new virtual aspects – or in Kuhn’s terms an articulation(10) – to the mechanical paradigm, primarily by developments in electronic and digital media.
A sign that this is an articulation rather than a rejection may be the use of the mechanical paradigm to define the formal potentials of the new electronic paradigm.(11) This is a sort of mechanical nostalgia that is noticeable in the architectural research produced by the architects of the electronic paradigm – Greg Lynn, Karl Chu(12), Lars Spuybroek, Stan Allen, Marcos Novak, Bernard Cache and others.(13) They all seem to have a mechanical nostalgia when they turn their attention to D’Arcy Thompson’s studies of biological forms,(14) Hannes Meyer’s diagrammatic equations for the Petersschule(15) or even earlier to the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908- )(16) as a frame for the potentials of the new media. Another example of this could be the architect Lars Spuybroek, who states that “a straight line is a badly informed curve,”(17) which in many ways is a concise expression of the shift from a mechanical straight paradigm to a curved electronic paradigm. Spuybroek is not just critical of the old paradigm, but he indicates that the straight line should know better and take advantage of the new space in which, it is placed. The new space of the electronic paradigm offers the straight-line entirely new degrees of freedom, which the old space of the mechanical paradigm never did. However, in this way the mechanical paradigm is kept as a simple or reduced version of the electronic informed paradigm, giving the shift a character of articulation rather than revolution. Within a normal science, novelty is not an aim, since novelty undermines the scientific legitimacy of the normal science, and disputes its very structure of reasoning. Instead, a successful normal science is one that confirms a given theory by bringing new articulation to the scientific constellation. Therefore, if a new (electronic) paradigm is able to incorporate the old (mechanical) paradigm, it is just an articulation of an existing and reigning paradigm and not a shift to a new paradigm.
All that said, what is then the position of architectural research in the structures of science as Thomas Kuhn has laid them out? Kuhn identifies three classes of activities in a normal science of which articulation is the most important and common one.(18) He writes: “It consists of empirical work undertaken to articulate the paradigm theory, resolving some of its residual ambiguities and permitting the solution of problems to which it had previously only drawn attention. This class proves to be the most important of all …”(19) He further describes one part of this articulation, which
… can resemble exploration, and it is particularly prevalent in those periods and sciences that deal more with the qualitative than with the quantitative aspects of nature’s regularity. Often a paradigm developed for one set of phenomena is ambiguous in its application to other closely related ones. Then experiments are necessary to choose among the alternative ways of applying the paradigm to the new area of interest.(20)
Therefore, even though architecture often seems to be a stranger to scientific methods and structures, with its non-linear processes and high degree of subjectivity, there still is a place for architectural research in what could be called traditional science. It is maybe not always at the forefront of revolutions, but at least firmly rooted in the matrix of normal science.
Many of the epistemological concepts that Kuhn introduces – articulation, exploration, clarification by reproduction and normal science – actually characterizes the way that architectural research produce knowledge. In the specific case of Peter Eisenman’s discourse on the subject of an electronic paradigm, we may therefore conclude that the shift, which Eisenman mentions, is not a definitive shift or break as described by Kuhn as a shift in paradigm, but rather a change of focus that has articulated and clarified the paradigm theory. Rather than being revolutionary – in a strictly scientific way – Eisenman is therefore well positioned within the tradition of normal science. And as it is the case with Eisenman, it is the case for many scientific architects, their work is most of all normality rather than novelty, even though the architect may consider him-/herself inherently modern and novel.
A Structure for this DissertationLet us for a moment look at this dissertation in that same light. Kuhn’s scientific structure may characterize three periods of change in the use of space as a design medium and offer a structure for my further investigations. The first change, around 1900, was from an absolute to a relative space, which later paved the way for a change in the figure/ground or material/space relationship, and thus for an active space as described by Stephen Kern in the chapter The Culture of Space and used by R.M. Schindler and F.L. Wright as described in the chapter Framed Space. This period established an individual and active view on space. The second change, around 1970, was the outset of postmodernism, the linguistic turn(21) and the positions of a critical(22) architecture (Robert Venturi, Edward W. Soja, Henri Lefebvre, Richard M. Rorty et al.), which gave a symbolic and political dimension to space. (23) This period established space as a semantic and discursive construction rather than only a formal construction.(24) The third change, around 1980, was the production of a synthetic digital space, which by now has become a second reality and a new realm for architectural constructions. This period opened an entirely new frontier of models, diagrams, parametrics, simulations and virtuality.
In the light of Kuhn’s scientific revolutions, we may ask, whether these three periods are separated by profound shifts in the underlining paradigms, or if they just are the foreseeable evolution of a modern culture? Any way we see it, they all have the character of cultural or scientific phenomena that is more profound than just a stylistic change.
Further, we could argue that my own position relative to my scientific method changes through the dissertation. It is outside in the part Investigation – observing paradigms of space by using a descriptive design theory,(25) while it is inside in the part Construction – articulating paradigms of space through prescriptive design methodology. In this way, the investigation and construction does have different relations to the normal science of architectural research. In Investigation, I use secondary literature as a guide for what is important and in some sense correct – in Kuhn’s words, I clarify the constellation that others have already constructed. In Construction, I try to articulate these constellations by applying that paradigm to a new area of interest – namely the use of space as a design tool. These two positions cannot always be separated as I often investigate myself as practicing architect, in the experiments for instance. But these initial considerations will offer a frame for dealing with architectural issues in a scientific manner and allow me to take a critical position toward my own research methods – to take one step back from the project and have an overview of the grounds that I am about to enter.
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(1) Kuhn, Thomas S. (1970 Edition (1962)), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, p. 1.
(2) In the postscript to the 1970 edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn develops the term as a disciplinary matrix, since the term theory was too narrow.
(3) According to Kuhn, the old paradigm and the new paradigm must be incomparable and incommensurable if a real shift has occurred.
(4) There are of course different schools of normality within architecture with different agendas and theoretical matrix – ecological, technical, sculptural, tectonic etc. For these schools the normality that Koolhaas and Eisenman establish may seem remote and unimportant.
(5) Einstein, Albert in Max Jammer (1993 Dover Edition (1954)), Concepts of Space, the History of Theories of Space in Physics, New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., p. xiv.
(6) Davidson, Cynthia, ed. (2000), AnyMore, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 183.
(7) Ibid.
(8) I do not agree with Eisenman in this categorical impossibility of a critical project in architectural practice. I believe that Eisenman only wants to direct his critique at the client, while the critique could be directed towards so many things – from a current Dutch point of view directed towards the generation and (post-)structuralist position that is personified in Peter Eisenman himself.
(9) Eisenman, Peter (1992), “Visions’ Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media,” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, ed. Kate Nesbitt (1996), New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.
(10) Kuhn (1970 Edition (1962)), op. cit., p. 27.
(11) The formal limits of the American avant-garde?
(12) Chu, Karl (1998), “Plane of Immanence,” in ANY 23: Diagram Work, New York, NY: ANY Corporation, and Chu, Karl (1997), “Music is the Hidden Arithmetical Exercise,” in From the Center: Design Process Sci-ARC, ed. Margaret Reeve and Michael Rotondi (1997), New York, NY: The Monacelli Press, 1997. The position of Karl Chu is still unclear, in the latter article he writes: “The normative conception of architecture is determined largely by classical metaphysics: a mechanistic paradigm that is universal, deterministic, timeless, and objective, without any reference to the observer. Everything is decomposable through formal reduction based on a set of axioms that lay claim to completeness.”
(13) Many of the architects mentioned have had Eisenman as a teacher or at least significant influence. This should be seen in relation to the securing of normality within architecture.
(14) One of the most used references is On Growth and Form from 1961 (first edition is from 1917) by the zoologist D’Arcy Thompson (1860-1948). See also Lynn, Greg (1999), Animate Form, New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, and Lynn, Greg (1998), Folds, Bodies & Blobs, Collected Essays, introduction by Ole Bouman, Bruxelles: La Lettre Volée.
(15) Allen, Stan (1998), “Diagrams Matter,” in ANY 25: Diagram Work, New York, NY: ANY Corporation. Hannes Meyer’s Petersshule from 1927 is particularly interesting because it was based on a cybernetic programming of space; the diagrammatic representation that Allen refers to is just one of many possible outcomes of an integrated programming of space, function and form. In the work by Meyer, there is a strange organic feature, different from the organic understanding of Louis H. Sullivan, F.L. Wright and R.M. Schindler, and yet not entirely scientific and programmatic. In many ways Meyer defined the basic rules for an organic process between cells, much in the way that architects at the end of the 20th century would use a computerized virtual space to create an architectural Petri dish for experiments.
(16) Cache, Bernard (1995), Earth Moves, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 116.
(17) Lars Spuybroek, Quote from lecture at RIBA, London (precise data unknown), mp3 downloaded from http://www.creativebase.com.
(18) Kuhn defines them as: determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory and articulation of theory. Kuhn (1970 Edition (1962)), op. cit., p. 34.
(19) Ibid., p. 27.
(20) Ibid., p. 29.
(21) Rorty, Richard, ed. (1967), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. In an architectural context, we could refer to Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, first published in 1966.
(22) For critical space in urban theory, see Watson, Sophie & Katherine Gibson, ed. (1995), Postmodern Cities & Spaces, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
(23) The status of these shifts in paradigm will be discussed later in the part Investigation.
(24) This second shift is also the basis for John Rajchman’s ‘bridge’ between architecture and philosophy, as we shall soon discuss.
(25) This is more the case for the textural discourses than for the experimental investigations.
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