Reorienting innovation: transdisciplinary research and building technology

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria-Paz Gutierrez

Over fifty years ago at the RIBA’s 1958 Oxford Conference, discussions about architectural research and science posed seminal questions about the very nature of creativity in architectural research and education. Leslie Martin observed that research is the tool by which theory is advanced. For more than half a century, we have seen traces of scientific research fuelling the advancement of architectural knowledge and its feedback loops into practice. Yet, interrogations around how architectural creativity is affected by intersections with the sciences are not new. The Bauhaus, for example, sought to integrate scientific thought in architectural education in 1936. Thus, why are emerging interdisciplinary collaborations where architecture, engineering and science converge at the inception of design potentially transformative?Increasing attempts to accelerate the pace of innovation in sustainable building technology is engendering pioneering intersections between architecture, engineering and natural science disciplines such as bioengineering and chemistry. The broad disciplinary breadth of these research processes inevitably requires mediating the diverse values, perspectives and research methodologies of disciplines that pursue innovation in different ways. However, to what extent is this new interdisciplinary convergence possibly transformative? Could it be that these processes, particularly in building technology innovation, may be influencing scientists and engineers to rethink how design problems are conceptualised and researched?

Author(s):  
Ömer Özgenç ◽  
◽  
Nur Çağlar ◽  
Işıl Ruhi-Sipahioğlu

Global research output grows exponentially each year. This paper attempts to drive meaning out of this big data on two fields of research in architecture. It maps the interaction between the research fields of sustainability in architecture and architectural education through the perspective of bibliometric data analysis and its visualization. Based on the analysis of bibliometric data, it draws and juxtaposes two timelines for the field of sustainable architecture and the field of architectural education. The objective is to propose a retrospective method that can provide insight for a broader understanding of sustainability and its impacts on architectural education. It utilizes VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and Gephi to visualize bibliometric networks, along with Tableau to analyze the number of journal articles and publications published across years. The paper presents initial findings concerning the leading scholars, trends, and patterns of the research areas, milestone events, and dominant studies to point out the significance of the cooperation between research and education fields of the related topic.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Macmillan

Like the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) that preceded it, the UK government's proposed Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a means of allocating funding in higher education to support research. As with any method for the competitive allocation of funds it creates winners and losers and inevitably generates a lot of emotion among those rewarded or penalised. More specifically, the ‘winners’ tend to approve of the method of allocation and the ‘losers’ denigrate it as biased against their activities and generally unfair. An extraordinary press campaign has been consistently waged against research assessment and its methods by those involved in architectural education, which I will track over a decade and a half. What follows will question whether this campaign demonstrates the sophistication and superior judgment of those who have gone into print, or conversely whether its mixture of misinformation and disinformation reveals not just disenchantment and prejudice, but a naivety and a depth of ignorance about the fundamentals of research that is deeply damaging to the credibility of architecture as a research-based discipline. With the recent consultation process towards a new cycle of research assessment, the REF, getting under way, I aim to draw attention to the risk of repeating past mistakes.


2013 ◽  
Vol 300-301 ◽  
pp. 1263-1266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhi Min Yan ◽  
Yong Fei Du ◽  
Jun Guo Huang ◽  
Yu Shun Li

Modern bamboo structural system is a new type of green sustainable building technology, conform with our country’s requirements of developing environment-protecting and energy-saving buildings. This paper presents a new lightweight, high-strength , earthquake-resistant and energy-saving system-steel-bamboo composite structural systems , and given the various structural elements of the composite structural systems of steel-bamboo production methods . This paper also gives the production methods of steel-bamboo composite elements. Steel-bamboo-structural system can per-fectly combine steel and bamboo to bear load together, and it have excellent mechanical properties and broad application prospects.


1985 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merton C. Flemings ◽  
Donald R. Sadoway

This is an era of great excitement and opportunity in the materials field, particularly for those of us in universities. Our field has expanded greatly in recent years. Materials scientists and engineers have joined forces with physicists, chemists, electrical engineers and others to pave the way for major technological advances. Remarkable strides in instrumentation have brought insights unimagined a decade ago. The realization is growing in so many other fields of research and education that further advances are limited largely by the capabilities of materials. There is no field of engineering that could not improve the efficiency or performance of its products, if better materials were available.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-33
Author(s):  
Ibrahim A. Shogar

This paper investigates the philosophical foundations of modern bioengineering to articulate its ethical framework. Engineering as an ultimate mechanism to transform knowledge into practice is essential for both physical and biological sciences. It reduces data, concepts, and designs to pictorial forms. The integration of engineering with the newly emerging biosciences, has presented a unique opportunity to overcome the major challenges that face the environmental and human health. To harness potentials of bioengineering and establish a sustainable foundation for green technology, modern scientists and engineers need to be acquainted with the normative questions of science. In addition to acquiring the general principles of scientific research and identifying the intrinsic goals of the endeavour, philosophy of bioengineering exposes bioengineers to both the descriptive ‘how’ questions of the physical world as well as the normative ‘why’ questions of values. Such an interdisciplinary approach is significant, not only for inspiring to acquire the genuine knowledge of the existing world, but also to expose the bioengineers to their ethical and social responsibilities. Besides introducing the conceptual framework of bioengineering, this paper has investigated the three major philosophies that have been dominating the theoretical presuppositions of scientific research method in history. Namely, (i) Systems biology approach; (ii) Evolutionary biology approach; and (iii) Mechanical view approach. To establish the ethical foundation of modern bioengineering, the paper, also has conducted an analytical study on various branches of the emerging discipline of bioscience.The paper has concluded that adopting the interdisciplinary approach in research and education is essential to harness potentials of bioengineering and to establish foundations of green technology. To achieve the final objectives of bioengineering, both the practical and theoretical knowledge of values must be acquired. The former is essential for invention and innovation; meanwhile the later exposes bioengineers to the integrated discipline of knowledge and values. 


2022 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Mehmet Ümit Meterelliyöz ◽  
Ozan Önder

This paper presents a series of educational case studies for the BIM-enabled pedagogical approaches for learning building systems and technology in the early stages of architectural education and provides evidence-based arguments about the influence of BIM on the students’ learning processes. Using a dual-channel pedagogical framework the study employed an object-oriented ontological approach tightly integrated with the parameterization of building components and their behaviors. Students experienced a fully BIM-enhanced course for learning fundamental concepts of building systems and technology where the creation of parametric BIM models was the main vessel for comprehensive understanding. The results show significant conceptual and practical advantages of BIM-enabled learning as well as the observed challenges in an educational context. The study also suggests positive educational transformations due to carefully devised BIM-based pedagogical frameworks for the understanding of building systems through parametric thinking and modeling. Based on a grounded theory approach, the findings are synthesized in a theoretical learning model including the systemic relationships between building technology content and parametric BIM methodology.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rohan O'Neil Bailey

<p>Changes in society, technology, and practice have created a significant demand for architectural graduates who can balance practical concerns with critical and abstract thinking. The current model of architectural education as it exists in academia, is hard pressed to supply this demand. This thesis seeks to redress this situation by connecting three maxims: 1) Strengthening the master-student dialogue is key to adequately exposing student designers to the issues involved in designing buildings that are fit for purpose, cost effective, sustainable and a delight to clients and users. 2) Sketching, a "designerly" way of thinking, is an integral part of this dialogue. 3) The computer in design education should directly contribute to helping students design buildings that are fit for purpose, cost effective, sustainable and a delight to clients and users. The thesis argues that due to the myriad of issues connected with architecture in today's society, the effectiveness of the student/master dialogue in architectural education has been weakened somewhat. At the centre of this dialogue is the sketch - a conversation between head and hand. The thesis will argue that by furnishing students with an "expert hand", the sketch becomes so empowered as to enrich the dialogue, raising the level of students' exposure to architectural issues. The suggested medium for this empowerment is the computer. Moving sketching into the digital realm as a direct means of thinking and learning is an innovative way of providing students with an "expert" digital hand. The sketch, for the student, becomes an intelligent conscious tool that supports and informs exploration. In turn, the empowered sketch presents the student with the many issues that comprise contemporary design problems. The result of this upliftment is a richer dialogue between student and teacher about architecture that is fit for purpose, economical and environmentally aware.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Kurath

Recent STS literature has described a trend of academisation in higher education and universities in which administrative bodies and formalised practices like evaluations have gained increased influence. This article discusses the impact of such trends on the discipline of architecture, focusing on the strains and boundaries that architectural faculties face in their research and teaching practice. Specifically, the development of design knowledge from individual and multiple theoretical and methodological approaches, the tight connection with tacit knowledge forms, as well as the use of non-formalised tenure and peer-review indicate on-going processes of boundary work (Gieryn, 1983), where external disciplines evaluate architectural knowledge production and demarcate it from their own research approaches. Due to the increased meaning of evaluations, such boundary work plays an increasing role in framing the form and content of design research. In this respect, architectural research becomes a matter of negotiation that not only involves architecture, but also traditional research disciplines as well as the added restrictions of interdisciplinary and administrative bodies.


1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hajo Neis ◽  

The Building Process was formally established as an Area of Emphasis by the Department of Architecture at Berkeley in 1988 with Christopher Alexander as the head. This step was taken in recognition of changing demands in architectural education and practice and the need to investigate design, planning and construction as one integrated process. Hajo Neis joined this new area in 1990 as a faculty, and describes the development, achievements and current state of this new direction in architectural education and its connection to architectural research and practice.


The dangers of forecasting will be obvious, particularly in the light of accelerating change emphasized by many of the previous speakers. In view of these papers by distinguished men, I cannot take refuge in one or two of the more certain of the developments and innovations to which they may have referred. I hope in these circumstances, I may be forgiven if I take something of a synoptic look, knowing that I have no unusual qualifications, except age, for this activity. I will therefore, in advance, apologize for some of my opinions, and understand that I am very vulnerable and can be challenged. In order to reach my assessment of needs, I shall take a look at the not-too-distant boundaries of technical development, for I share with scientific colleagues, great anxiety, though I retain some optimism. Any acceptable reference to needs however does not ensure that they will be met. Twelve years ago, we were encouraged by the reassessment of architectural education at Oxford (1958) and by a sequence of tripartite conferences which had, as their objective, a collaboration of effort in all matters of the organization of the Building Industry with a view to improved performance of both personnel and the project. In the years that followed we had many outward signs of innovation and development, as typified by curtain walling, the use of the tower crane and other mechanical handling gear, a number of prefabricated systems, and the nearly universal installation of central heating. It may be an oversimplification, but, for the argument, the development of much of this work preceded research, except no doubt behind the closed doors of individual companies. Research has tended to follow these manifestations - post mortem in effect - a condition that tends to bedevil the development and innovation of the industry. Much of the Building Research Station’s work is concerned with research which has become important due to failure, or simply lack of performance: this is not meant to be a criticism but it does reduce opportunities for innovation. In the considerable programme of work in the B. R. S.’s 50th anniversary year, great efforts are being made to improve concrete and develop plastics, to study jointing systems and sealants as related to accuracy and tolerances, and to portray with more certainty the interrelated problems of environment. Certainly a full programme, but it reveals some of the education, training and control deficiencies of the industry itself, which cannot be ignored.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document