Case Study Strategies for Architects and Designers

Integrative Data Research Methods

Marja Sarvimaki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317480617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architektur Methoden & Materialien

Case Study Strategies for Architects and Designers explains methods in evidence-based design, also called practice-based research, to show you the value of research to your designs. Topics covered pertain to data collection and analysis techniques, including surveys, interviews, fieldwork, participatory design, occupancy evaluations, and memory sketching. Integrative data evaluation, theoretical sampling, triangulation, pattern matching logic, and analytical generalization are also discussed. Global research precedents, exercises, further reading, section summaries, sidebars, more than 30 black and white images and tables will help you conduct empirical inquiries in real-life contexts.

Chapter 1

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY REALM

ABSTRACT

In this first chapter, we take a general outlook of case study strategies from various interdisciplinary perspectives, in order to find out what lessons architects and other designers can learn from case studies conducted in the various scholarship areas relevant to design research. The discussion includes literature reviews on the topic, characteristics of case studies, ontological, and epistemological premises of this research methodology (as opposing to case studies as teaching tools), and implications of the existing body of knowledge on the research design of design research, alternately called evidence-based design or practice-based research. As communication can be challenging in the interdisciplinary realm, when the participants crossing disciplinary boundaries are using their own jargon, the aim of this chapter also is to establish common, recognized terminology regarding case studies among architects and other designers demonstrating interdisciplinary views.

Among the publications on case-study methodology, Case Study Research: Design and methods by Robert K. Yin is, without doubt, the “classic” in the field of sociology, and a very valuable resource for architects, planners, and other designers, too, particularly for those dealing with social issues, such as community planning, neighborhood activism, humanitarian volunteerism, participatory research, and environmental design. As Yin states: “Whatever the field of interest, the distinctive need for case study research arises out of the desire to understand complex social phenomena. In brief, a case study allows investigators to focus on a ‘case’ and retain a holistic and real-world perspective.”¹ Yin points out that case-study research is common not only in the discipline of sociology, but also in anthropology and ethnography, political science, and psychology, as well as in many areas of practicing professionals, including accounting, business and international business, education, evaluation, marketing, nursing and public health, public administration, and social work.² Although Yin does not mention architecture and related design fields, it is evident that many of his principles and examples of case-study research are relevant to students, scholars, and practitioners conducting design research as well. This holds true particularly because the real world and the users—that is, a society—are the foci of many research projects conducted by architects, urban planners, landscape architects, and other designers of the built environment.

Additional interdisciplinary views on case-study research are provided by various resources, of which the Embedded Case Study Methods: Integrating quantitative and qualitative knowledge by Scholz and Tietje, as well as “The architecture of multiple case study research in international business” by Pauwels and Matthyssens in Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for International Business are most relevant in terms of design research strategies. While the former offers a number of multidisciplinary views on the case study method, most importantly in environmental sciences, the latter provides a very rigorous method of data evaluation and integration for researchers that is also applicable to architects, and other designers. In addition, the Encyclopedia of Case Study Research is an essential handbook here with its articles on various types and definitions of case study methodology. As case studies can, and most often do, include qualitative data, the Qualitative Research: The essential guide to theory and practice by Savin-Baden and Howell Major as well as Qualitative Research Design by Joseph Maxwell are accompanying resources of both inspiration and information in our quest to learn lessons from other disciplines.

It is symptomatic that the aforementioned resources on case study strategy hardly mention the discipline of architecture or design research in general, though there is an interesting entry in the Encyclopedia of Case Study Research titled “Case study in creativity research” in which “the applied arts of architecture” has, at least, deserved a notion (though not a definition) in discussing creativity both in arts and research; e.g., Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven as artists, in comparison to Darwin, Einstein, and Edison as creative scientists.³ Nevertheless, the lack of design research in the existing body of knowledge on any research methodology is understandable taking into account the limited research traditionally conducted by architects and other designers; if any, this has typically been limited to historical research. However, due to an apparent paradigm shift in terms of evidence-based design that has recently taken place in academe and practice, it is now imperative to add design disciplines into this discourse.

1.1 WHAT IS INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH?

Interdisciplinary: Drawing from, and integrating methods and insights of, two or more academic disciplines, professions, technologies, and/or departments in the pursuit of a common goal.

Also used almost interchangeably as a synonym or umbrella for:

• Multidisciplinary: Joining together two or more disciplines, while each discipline yields discipline-specific results (e.g., a multidisciplinary conference on AIDS with stand-alone presentations of participating disciplines, such as medicine, politics, sociology, sexology, etc.).

• Cross-disciplinary: Crossing disciplinary boundaries to explain one subject in terms of another discipline (e.g., politics of literature, or physics of music, or, in turn, musical theories in architecture).

• Transdisciplinary: Dissolving boundaries between disciplines for the purpose of achieving new insight or of expanding the discipline’s resources (often suggesting deliberate violation of conventional disciplinary rules).

Although these are the general distinctions, we will also discuss them in detail in Chapter 3 with regard to Repko’s definitions.

Source: Allen Repko, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012).

Adding to the above existing body of knowledge, Architectural Research Methods by Linda Groat and David Wang sheds some light into case study research in the discipline of architecture. Besides the discussion in the first edition (2002), including Fernando Lara’s interesting study The Rise of Popular Modernist Architecture in Brazil⁴ with mixed-method research design including comprehensive case studies, the second edition (2013) provides additional, more current examples of architectural case study strategies. Since Groat and Wang’s textbook has been used in architecture schools across the world for over ten years now and it has, to some extent, established common terminology within the design scholarship globally, we use similar terms here whenever appropriate. Likewise, in the chapter on architectural case studies, Groat and Wang largely follow the definitions and principles laid out by Yin.⁵ Regarding design research specifically, Kopec, Sinclair, and Matthes, in Evidence Based Design: A process for research and writing, offer more strategies and exercises for architectural case studies, as the title implies. As for citations, the above resources use various referencing styles (MLA, APA, Harvard, etc.), but in this book we use the Chicago Manual of Style bibliography format in the text and author–date (in-text) format in the info boxes only (for more, see the Ontological and Epistemological Premises of Case Studies section). Some more titles on design research are listed in the Bibliography for your reference, although those have not been the primary sources here.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CASE STUDIES

All the above-mentioned authors emphasize the significance of rigorous research methodology, including that of case study research, to gain reliable information on the topic of inquiry. For this reason, and due to the characteristics of this specific research strategy discussed below, Yin points out that a case study research project should always start with a theoretical proposition of what is being studied and proceed to analytical rather than statistical generalizations,⁶ consisting of a working hypothesis or another principle which is “tested” with each empirical case study at a conceptual level, based on the “lessons learned” from each case. In Yin’s words, “empirical research advances only when it is accompanied by theory and logical inquiry, and not when treated as a mechanistic data collection endeavor.”⁷ Yin also strictly distinguishes between case studies as teaching tools and as research strategies: “Teaching case studies [in which data can be manipulated for educational purposes] need not be concerned with the rigorous and fair presentation of empirical data; research case studies need to do exactly that.”⁸ Only the latter kinds of case studies are, hence, examined in this book.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Finding answers to “how” or “why” questions often benefits greatly from case studies, which are frequently combined with fieldwork, surveys, interviews, observations, or other data collection techniques that are not exclusively those of case study strategy.

Like always, when choosing appropriate strategies for a research design, the decisions depend primarily on the nature of the research question or questions; these are hereafter addressed in singular, as, in principle, a broader research question should be divided into sub-questions of which only one or some might lead to case studies. All the above, in turn, often are the consequence of the investigator’s paradigm (the latter is discussed in Paradigmatic Foundations of Case Studies). With some topics of inquiry, case study methodology is not appropriate at all; sometimes it can provide important, supplementary information within a mixed-method research design, though a case study can also be the end in itself. For instance, “what” or “how much” type research questions can be investigated by the means of correlational, experimental, quasi-experimental, or simulation research, whereas “who” or “where” or “when” questions can additionally be answered by archival data and other information from historical research. Finding answers to “how” or “why” questions, on the other hand, often benefits greatly from case studies, which are frequently combined with fieldwork, surveys, interviews, observations, or other data collection techniques that are not exclusively those of case study strategy.

According to Yin, both in developing a case study research design and in reporting its outcome, it is of outmost importance to carefully choose and word the research question in a way that shows that answering it requires case study methodology, instead of any other research and/or data generation techniques.⁹ This is especially relevant to design research, as the basic premise in those kind of inquiries is often how to design in a particular context or for specific users, how to apply certain technologies or principles, why something works or doesn’t, and other topics of the kind discussed below.

PAST VS. PRESENT

In addition to the nature of your research question, decisions in depicting a research design depend on whether your topic of inquiry deals with a phenomenon in the past, or with a contemporary set of events. With the former, historical research naturall...