Research Dynamics

The School of Architecture Sint-Lucas is a School with a long standing tradition in designing and has traditionally a strong relationship with the School of Art. It’s main competence is the exploration of conceptual designing. Since four year the School started investing in research developments in line with this tradition.

This contribution will, based on our recent experiences, tackle the theme of the conference following three parallel tracks.

First it is based on examining running PhD projects at our School of Architecture Sint-Lucas and the role of engaging with the broader context in these projects. As a design school our education has always taken into account the current social developments. The broader cultural and social context has always been very important. Recently, this has been taken as one of the main criteria for developing research. Some examples will be given trying to clarify how these engage with the wider community.

Secondly, the paper will explore some finished PhDs (especially where practice and designing did play an important role) and the role of critical reflection in the research process. It will especially try to elaborate on the role of this critical reflection in relation the overall research methodology.  How does theoretical work and critical reflection interact?

Finally it will reflect on and try to capture context, processes of knowledge generation and research output communication. Interest will especially be paid to the question how these projects interact with the world outside the academy. How can we establish connections and raise interest with industry, musea, cultural organization, … It will be reported that research themes have developed collaborations with musea and other organization, creating recognition of the value of our research outside our academic context. Some examples will be touched indicating some difficulties as well as benefits of this interaction.

Moreover, the contribution intends to explore these questions highlighting (aspects of) knowledge production through critical reflection. It will try to explore the role of reflection can play in developing research. Reflecting on experiences and practice can and should interact with and have impact on the more theoretical work. Research by design should be more than developing examples to illustrate theory; the experiences from practice and designing should interact with the research activities in a way that (through reflection processes) designing as an activity creates added value for the final research outcomes and society in general.

Finally, some of the researchers in our School report that their research activities is changing and having impact on their design studio teaching as well as interaction with the cultural sector.

Johan Verbeke, Prof. Dr. / head of School
Sint-Lucas School of Architecture (W&K)