Design Research

DESIGN RESEARCH THESIS 2012 abridged version 1.0

DESIGN RESEARCH Being a contributing member to the University of Michigan, a research institution, Taubman College is engaged in an important conversation about research. Particularly within architecture, design research becomes the focus of the academy. Most recently, the college has seen great projects and progress made through different research initiatives. Some, such as Research Through Making, have produced provocative projects, both built and unbuilt. Research is apparent; it is around us, in Liberty Lofts, and within the college, and it is a great, unique characteristic of the university.

The question, however, about how do we stage research, has not been as apparent a point of conversation. How does the staging of research, as Wayne Booth would ask, “shape the kinds of questions we ask and answer we offer”?

Can research place importance on both expected successes and productive failures? Throughout the thesis project, the student is trying to learn how architects stage research, because how we stage research influences its results and the conclusions we come to from them. This topic is illustrated through the year long work on the column, with the intent to proffer answers for “What can the project of design research be?”

The research began with an intriguing question; why was the column not a central part of the architecture today, as it had been in the past? Did modernist architects try to eliminate the column from architecture?

The work seemed warranted, both by the researcher’s own inclination, but also by a quote found during the research.

"I believe that the first principle of any theory consists in obstination about some subjects; and that is typical of artists, and especially of architects, to focus on one subject, to develop it, to bring an option within architecture into being and to always want to solve the same problem."

- Aldo Rossi

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In response to the question about the column, the staging of the research here was intended to be open ended, in the sense that the researcher had little idea of what the end product would be, whether a building, an installation, or a written document, but only that it would be relevant to understanding the column.

This staging of the project resulted in a meandering yet rigorous investigation.

Questions begat more questions, in a search for understanding, a pure research framework. These questions, however, followed a process. Each were rigorously tested through drawings and models, and evaluated on objectives set up at the start of each project. Here the “evidence� to support the claims made were in the physical built projects, their spatial outcomes, and an evaluation of them.

The right side of this document illustrates the projects undertaken during the research.

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The first exercise was a historical essay on the column from the industrial revolution until the present. It illustrates the shift from a column based architecture to a surface emphatic architecture.

In summary, the text speaks of how the industrial revolution created the opportunity to to distance architecture from its historic, column oriented past and realize new opportunities of open, unconstrained space.

A new emphasis on surface seemed ideal for taking on the complexities of a contemporary society. However, now in the 21st century, pavilions by the likes of SANAA, Francisco Mangado, among others are showing a resurgence of the vertical element in architecture.

Were modernist architects trying to eliminate the column?

As research developed on the column, it was noticed that the column, and its relationship to the roof plane, could make the roof appear to float. If one could eliminate the column, floating would finally be achieved. This floating, which the reseacher came to find out, was indeed an agenda of Modernism.

Maybe modernsist architects were only eliminating the column to achieve a sense of floating? Floating, however, as a project, ultimately took the research away from the column.

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The second exercise investigates the elimination of the column as a means to the pursuit of floating. Until the industrial revolution, the desire for a floating architecture remained illusory and utopic. With the advent of new materials, including steel and glass, the appearance of floating became possible. This desire to float or hover architecture was not only a reaction to the ability to do so, but was also reinforced by parallel cultural events, including the fascination with the automobile, the airplane, and space travel in the 20th century.

Fig. 1.. Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollywood Hills Sports Club, 1947 (Conrads, 1962, 55.)

Fig. 2. Chernikov, 1930, rendering. (Conrads, 1962, 106.)

Fig. 3. Konrad Wachsman, 1950, large hangar (Conrads, 1962, 116.)

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Were architects not eliminating the column but rather aiming to achieve a sense of floating?

The research on floating, although highly fascinating, ultimately led the researcher away from the column. Given that architecture must be supported from the ground, what types of contemporary columns might exist?

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The third exercise asks, if columns must exist, what are contemporary column types? Columns begin to take on four contemporary forms, including point columns, column fields, colossal columns, and “surface swoops.� It is the column field, however, that gathers attention of the researcher, who sees potential in it for contemporary uses for the column.

The research begins to look at Reiser + Umemoto and other architects using parametric design to realize new potential for the column.

If architecture must be supported from the ground, what are contemporary column types?

In response to the need for the column to exist, a further questtion was asked, If modernist architects eliminated the column, what might an architecture of excessive columns be? Where were architects using too many columns?

Many architects are currently using this form language, which is visible in both newly built work and pavilions of recent expos, and the researcher wanted to understand it.

The ideal typology for a place of excessive columns was the hypostyle hall. The investigations into hypostyle halls led one to realize that column fields emphasize movement and depth, both of which make them attractive today, in a world of image architecture and surface articulation.

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The fourth exercise examines the use of columns to create depth and the perception of movement, two qualities that are difficult for a surface, by nature of its thinness, to create. Here the columns shape space, direct movement, and also, by rotating along their vertical axis, create a hierarchy and nuance to the field.

The following iterations show a plan view, section, and elevation of hypostyle halls trials.

Can the column be used to shape contemporary space?

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Furthering exercise four, exercise five tests the theories of depth and movement with a “dog sized” model.

These investigations are eventually tested in a pavilion for MOMA PS1, where the column is confronted with not only shaping space but also with holding the PS1 program. The pavilion exercise, however, ran into a number of difficulties, particularly that vertical members no longer seemd to be “columns,” as voiced by a number of reviewers and questioned by the researcher.

How can the column field create an experience of depth, an awareness of movement, and hold program?

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Exercise six rigorously takes on how vertical members are classified, discovering that material, load, or semiotics are the categories by which they are organized. For example, the material wood dictates that a vertical member of wood be called a post. When loaded axially, the member becomes a column, as in the spinal column. Lastly, in semiotics, vertical members portraying symbols of columns become classified as such.

What are the characteristics of a column that make it classified as a column?

The process, though linear at times, was mostly cyclical, in that a thought would reappear from earlier work and be carried through in a different medium. For instance, only through the the work on monsters, shown adjacent to this page, could the researcher better understand the column hybrids observed at the start of the work, and thus reframe an understanding of how they operate and how an architect could create them.

This type of staging of research is relevant because it places an importance on the cyclical and probing nature of research, which is why, one can argue, research is conducted in the first place. Furthermore, it holds evaluation until the end, giving each lineage of the tree an unbiased reading. These claims add up to an idea that research can be a discursive project or a more concrete productive project, with both models being important. In this model of research, the conclusions and understandings came to would not have resulted if the project were focused on an end project. The same can be true, however, in that a “end project� would have provided a deeper understanding of one particular thread, which also would be useful.

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Exercise seven takes on the previous classification system but attempts to understand column properties by using the monster, a combination of two known forms, to classify the previous columns into monster categories.

The idea of the monster resulted from research in a separate but similar subject related project. To further this understanding of the column, column-chair hybrids are made, exposing the column’s characteristics.

Understand the qualities of a column by using the concept of a monster and combining the column with the chair.

To this end, throughout this project, different attempts or starts were made in the interest of producing a singular project. These included the work on a full scale column installation, a “ideal house,� and a Monsters of Architecture comic. All of these, however, did not seem to present the true research, which was more about how we work on a project rather than an end project.

And thus one can argue that research should be conducted via both models, that of the discursive to open up our understanding of architecture, and that of the productive project, which gives traction and depth within the contemporary academy and the profession.

In opening the floor to discussion, we can ask these questions. How do we conduct design research? Can research be generated from the bottom up, particularly regarding subjects we know little about? What is the role of failure and dead ends in design research?

Does the search for knowledge always result in what was sought after?

The pure research framework did not lead to one finished project, but instead opened up the opportunity for further research, both in applied and pure research trajectories.

column surface hybrids

digital columns

movement and perception of depth

floating in architecture

subtle parametric design

directional/inflected column

structure as material affect

monsters of architecture GENESIS

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PRODUCTION VIS

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point surfaces

column + occupation

Applied Research

What are the opportunities for further research?

pavilion life cycle

Pure Research

Branden K. Clements