ARCH 9200/9300/9500/9700 Thesis Sequence

A practical guide to research for architects and designers--now updated and expanded! From searching for the best glass to prevent glare to determining how clients might react to the color choice for restaurant walls, research is a crucial tool that architects must master in order to effectively address the technical, aesthetic, and behavioral issues that arise in their work. This book's unique coverage of research methods is specifically targeted to help professional designers and researchers better conduct and understand research. Part I explores basic research issues and concepts, and includes chapters on relating theory to method and design to research. Part II gives a comprehensive treatment of specific strategies for investigating built forms. In all, the book covers seven types of research, including historical, qualitative, correlational, experimental, simulation, logical argumentation, and case studies and mixed methods. Features new to this edition include: Strategies for investigation, practical examples, and resources for additional information A look at current trends and innovations in research Coverage of design studio-based research that shows how strategies described in the book can be employed in real life A discussion of digital media and online research New and updated examples of research studies A new chapter on the relationship between design and research Architectural Research Methods is an essential reference for architecture students and researchers as well as architects, interior designers, landscape architects, and building product manufacturers.

While fundamentally a design discipline, architectural education requires an element of history and theory, grouped under the term "research." However, many students struggle with this part of their course. This practical handbook provides the necessary grounding in this subject, addressing essential questions about what research in architecture can be. The first part of the book is a general guide to the fundamentals of how to do research, from assembling a literature review to conducting an interview. The second section presents a selection of case studies dealing with such topics as environmental psychology, the politics of space, ethnographic research, and mapping. The range of methods explored illustrates the variety of possible approaches, with authoritative guidance on how best to deploy a research framework.

This is the first writing reference book for designers. The book includes resources for how to write a designer’s manifesto, statements of design intent, criticism, thesis, proposals, review statements, research reports, specifications, field reports, client communications, post-occupancy evaluations, and e-mailed meeting agendas so that you can navigate your career from school to the profession.

Architecture School opens with six chronological essays, each devoted to a major period of development: before 1860; 1860–1920; 1920–1940; 1940–1968; 1968–1990; and 1990 to the present. This overview is followed by a “lexicon” containing shorter articles on more than two dozen topics that have figured centrally in archictecture education's history, from competitions and design pedagogy to research, structures, studio culture, and travel.

Critical architectural theory has, over the past decade and a half, undergone significant transformation. The urgency of the 1990s propractice movement, with its mandate to focus on the realities of building, has shifted architectural theory away from utopian ideals and heavy-handed cultural critiques toward the realities of architecture and building. This transition renders theory's immediate history particularly relevant to contemporary thought and practice. Constructing a New Agenda offers an overview of the myriad approaches and attitudes adopted by architects and architectural theorists during this era. In this long-awaited follow-up to our critically acclaimed and best-selling anthologyTheorizing a New Agenda, editor A. Krista Sykes collects twenty-eight essays that address architectural theory from the mid-1990s, where the first volume left off, through the present. Multiple themes--including the impact of digital technologies on processes of architectural design, production, materiality, and representation; the implications of globalization and networks of information; the growing emphasis on sustainable and green architecture; and the phenomenon of the "starchitect" and iconic architecture--overlap to address the contemporary situation as a whole. By providing, in one place, the keytheoretical texts of the past fifteen years,Constructing a New Agenda becomes a foundation for ongoing discussions surrounding contemporary architectural thought and practice. Contributions by distinguished thinkers and makers such as Stan Allen, Deborah Berke, Michael Braungart, Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter, Greg Lynn, Reinhold Martin, William McDonough, William Mitchell, Samuel Mockbee, Glenn Murcutt, Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, Michael Speaks and Anthony Vidler are preceded by brief introductions that establish each essay's particular historical context and significance. An afterword by preeminent architectural theorist K. Michael Hays reflects on where architectural theory is today and where it's headed in the future.

In order to understand architecture in all its cultural complexity it is necessary to grasp certain basic concepts such as representation, form, and space. The aim of this book is to provide designers, teachers, students, and interested laypersons with a set of ideas that will enrich their conversation, their writing, and above all their thinking about architecture. Written in a conversational style, it introduces difficult concepts gradually, step by step. Architectural theorists and philosophers are mentioned in passing and their works are listed in the bibliography, but they are not the subject of the book. Architecture, rather than philosophy, is at the centre of the picture. The aim is to enable the reader to understand architecture in all its aspects, rather than to learn the names of particular theorists. The book is divided into eight chapters, each covering a particular aspect of architecture. Thinking about Architecture will be an invaluable standard introduction to architectural theory for architecture students, practising architects and interested general readers.

This book offers a systematic account of the process of designing in architecture. Design thinking can be regarded as a fundamentally different way of knowing the world and a particular form of addressing creative problems.