Undergraduate Research in Architecture

A Guide for Students

D. Andrew Vernooy, Jenny Olin Shanahan, Gregory Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367415624
  9780367415631
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000364361
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Undergraduate Research in Architecture: A Guide for Students supplies tools for scaffolding research skills, with examples of undergraduate research activities and case studies on projects in the various areas of architecture study. Undergraduate research has become a common degree requirement in some disciplines and is growing rapidly. Many undergraduate activities in music have components that could be combined into compelling undergraduate research projects, either in the required curriculum, as part of existing courses, or in capstone courses centered on undergraduate research.

Following an overview chapter, the next seven chapters cover research skills including literature reviews, choosing topics, formulating questions, citing sources, disseminating results, and working with data and human subjects. A wide variety of sub-disciplines follow in the remaining chapters, with sample project ideas from each as well as undergraduate research conference abstracts. The final chapter is an annotated guide to online resources. Included are some inspirational quotations concerning architecture's commitment to research, and some examples of professional research that support the focus of the chapter. All chapters end with relevant questions for discussion.

1

Overview

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

– Frank Lloyd Wright¹

One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again.

– Renzo Piano²

Summary

This chapter outlines the undergraduate research environment and where architecture fits into it, focusing on the benefits of reframing some of the excellent creative work already being done in colleges and universities. Within that context, ideas are shared as to the importance of undergraduate research, desired learning outcomes, how knowledge and art are created, and how to get the most out of this book. Students from freshman through masters programs will begin to understand how their learning can be linked to the discovery of knowledge while they become more engaged in the process. This interactive pedagogy is much more interesting than traditional passive learning, and the use of the term research is certainly not limited to the sciences and/or related fields.

Introducing the Undergraduate Research Movement

Over the last forty years in the United States, undergraduate research activity in colleges and universities has been increasing dramatically, led initially by science professors needing help in laboratories. Thanks to national organizations like the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) and the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), these activities have been spreading rapidly into all disciplines. In fact, even though CUR was started by chemists at primarily undergraduate institutions in 1978 as a way of collaborating with undergraduates in their research labs, the biggest division of CUR at the present time is Arts & Humanities. NCUR began in 1987 as a celebration of undergraduate research in all disciplines open to all colleges and universities and currently registers about 3500 student presenters and 500 faculty mentors annually. In 2011 the first British Conference on Undergraduate Research (BCUR) was held, and it continues annually with the recent addition of Posters in Parliament, modeled after Posters on the Hill in the United States. The first Australian Conference on Undergraduate Research (ACUR) was held in 2012, and they too have Posters in Parliament now. The first World Congress for Undergraduate Researchers (WorldCUR) was held in Qatar in November 2016.³

Undergraduate research (UR) is a high-impact practice that benefits students across demographic groups and disciplines, especially underrepresented minority students. Yet many UR opportunities are highly selective and still predominantly in the lab sciences; much less so in disciplines such as music and architecture where creative activity abounds but research and scholarship have not been the main focus, at least with undergraduates. URSCA refers to undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activities, and is seen by many as being more inclusive. Faculty and students in the arts are becoming more accustomed to viewing what they do through the lens of undergraduate research. Participating in URSCA in the music curriculum is key to accessing its profound benefits, including increased retention and graduation rates, cognitive and emotional development, acquisition of highly valued skills, and preparation for post-baccalaureate opportunities.

Undergraduates who engage in research and creative scholarships demonstrate significant gains in the very learning outcomes most highly valued not only by their professors, but also by their future employers: creative and critical thinking, problem-solving and analysis, intellectual curiosity, adaptability, and oral and written communication. Participation in the high-impact practice of UR transforms students during their college careers—with deeper engagement and marked academic gains—and well into their post-baccalaureate careers.

Where Architecture Fits into the Undergraduate Research Movement

Design imbibes research, yet architecture education has not developed research as a pedagogical tradition. The profession of architecture, facing the changes in communication, energy, and mobility that characterize the The Third Industrial Revolution ⁴ has clearly marked research skills as an essential aspect of their practice. We, the academy, must catch up. Unlike other disciplines with scholarship focused undergraduate capstone courses and lab or social science traditions, architecture relies on its traditions of design and review. This is where Undergraduate Architecture Research begins, with the design studio, recognizing that “Form is Knowledge”, and that investigating the transformation of form is research.

FIGURE 1.1 Buckminster Fuller and his Dymaxion House, a design based upon research assumptions, investigations, and formal conclusions; he was famous for asking, “Do you know how much your building weighs?” Getty Images, Bettmann Collection.

Buckminster Fuller saw research as the only way that the profession could solve the problems of its time. That insight could not be more apt today. The American Institute of Architects views “aggregating and communicating research-related education, and encouraging research method instruction and research-based content in architectural schools” as one of its primary objectives. The Associated Collegiate Schools of Architecture includes research-related objectives in four of its five Strategic Planning goals. With the social, environmental, and tectonic complexities of the professional context in which architects operate, research as an educational objective must be integrated throughout the curriculum; it can no longer stand apart as a single entry on a list of required courses. This text will equip architecture faculty and undergraduate architecture majors for courses or projects that have undergraduate research components. It is intended to change the current curricular topography.

As learning in college becomes more active and students desire greater input into their own education, undergraduate research and creative activities become more significant and more interesting. Since search engines like Google can help students find a plethora of content instantly, learning how to actually create knowledge, how to tap into our creativity, and how to advance the discipline of architecture should be even more important.

There are many different terms for undergraduate research, including inquiry, scholarship, creative activity, and creative scholarship. These terms are used interchangeably, although scholars in various disciplines often have preferences for the ways they describe their work. Many people involved in CUR, especially in its Arts and Humanities division, use URSCA. Whether you prefer one term over another, or your university has a program that uses certain terms, the term itself does not matter as much as what is it indicates: scholarly work that is faculty-mentored, original, disciplinarily appropriate, and disseminated.⁵

We generally avoid some of the science terms such as hypothesis and methodology when designing a building, for example, and could substitute terms such as background research, conceptual framework, and design philosophy. Students of architecture or any other field also benefit from the cross-pollination that occurs when considering how undergraduate research is practiced in disciplines that are quite different from their own and when they explore the different terminology.

How can students do something original when professors, scholars, architects, historians, and other architecture practitioners have already done so much research? One way is to take an interdisciplinary approach, viewing architecture from the perspective of another discipline. For example there has been little research published on the correlations between architecture and economics. Architecture and the brain offers topics that are ripe for discovery, especially with new advances in medical technology that allow even undergraduates the opportunity to view brain wave activity while students are in design mode. One example of this kind of interdisciplinarity began in 1991 when an architecture professor named JB Bancroft approached me (Young) and said, “Have you heard the quote ‘Architecture is frozen music’?” I said yes, and we started a small research project centered on terminology and sources of inspiration that were common to both disciplines. This led to us teaching an undergraduate research seminar for eight music majors and eight architecture majors. After helping us flesh out the important correlations between the two disciplines, the music majors were required to compose a piece of music based on a building, and the architecture majors had to design a building based on music they chose. Much of the student work was published in an MIT journal, and the professors were invited to lecture in Italy, Tasmania, and Japan.⁶

Thinking about other possibilities for interdisciplinary seminars, what subjects could be paired with architecture? Or another way of thinking about it is, are there any that could not be paired with architecture? Chapter 16 of this book is focused on interdisciplinarity.

Students do not have to follow such an interdisciplinary path, however. There are many standard activities in undergraduate architecture programs that students and professors have been engaged in for decades that have not been generally regarded as undergraduate research. An example would be analyzing a building and then using it as a model to create a new design. This practice goes back centuries, along with other similar activities. Since universities and colleges are now stressing the importance of undergraduate research campus-wide, and students in most disciplines are doing it as a regular part of their education and presenting their findings publicly, architecture majors would benefit from joining in. Campus-wide celebrations of undergraduate research with oral and poster sessions are becoming common on college campuses but are still dominated by the sciences. These symposia could be enhanced with greater contributions from the arts, including a variety of architecture projects. And directors of such events are often open to the idea of using special venues for architecture-related projects and allowing different methods of delivery, including posters, building models, multi-media, and oral presentations.

Why Undergraduate Research Is Important

An undergraduate architecture degree would not be complete without a substantial exploration into the discovery of knowledge, whether that exploration is focused on any one of a variety of topics, such as: the way new architecture is created; the effectiveness of different pedagogies; historical revelations or re-discoveries; or innovative techniques, analyses or practices. Such a study is often undertaken in the latter part of an architecture degree, but ideally one should be exposed to the act of discovery and creation as often as possible throughout the degree program.

When students are asked about their vision for how they would like to learn, many say they want it to be exciting, applicable, social, and interactive. Doing group projects, working alongside professors, having input instead of passively listening, and helping to chart their own pathways, can all be components of undergraduate research in architecture. When employers are asked what skills they want future employees to have, many list teamwork, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, as well as written and oral communication. All of these can be strengthened by a real academic experience in undergraduate research and creative activity.

Can Undergraduate Research Benefit the Student and the Professor?

More and more, universities are emphasizing the integration of scholarship and teaching, linking student learning with the discovery of knowledge, and making active learning a hallmark experience of an undergraduate degree. One of the best ways to accomplish all of these is to have a professor carve out a small piece of his/her own larger research project and assign it to a student. Examples abound in chemistry, where researchers can be much more productive in the laboratory with the help of undergraduate researchers, and the students can learn the complex process of original research in their field. In the arts and humanities, and particularly in architecture, professors often view their research/creativity as individual scholarly pursuits, and published articles and architectural designs are usually listed with only one author/architect. However, with a little creativity, win–win situations can be created that increase productivity for the professors and that provide first-hand experience on the front lines of the creation of art or original research for the students. See Megan Haley’s project description for the Sustainability Asse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• 1 Overview
• 2 Literature reviews
• 3 Choosing topics and formulating appropriate research questions or project goals
• 4 Working with human subjects
• 5 Collecting data and carrying out arts research
• 6 Analyzing and synthesizing data
• 7 Citing sources
• 8 Dissemination of results
• 9 Form is knowledge: Design as research
• 10 Material assembly and structure
• 11 Architecture and the sustainable environment
• 12 Architecture and history
• 13 Engagement: Architecture and society
• 14 Architecture and urban design
• 15 Architecture and the profession
• 16 Online Resources
• Index