ir. Herwin Sap, Architect BNA
Postbus 2122 / 6201 CA / Maastricht
Omstraat 17 / 3620 / Veldwezelt [Be]
Tel. 06-12367447
h.a.sap@has-architectuur.nl



Paper for Research by Design Conference, TU Delft, 1-3/11/00


Research by design, demarcation and recognition

dr.ir. C.H. Doevendans
ir. H.A. Sap

There is a strong tendency to see designing as a form of research; research by design. On the other hand is stated that the urban-design discipline has ceased to exist or doesn't develop anymore. Is this correct and can 'research by design' change this situation? These are the questions of concern in this paper, taking into account that -differently from what is often stated- urban design has an established research tradition. Seven schools or directions from this research tradition are briefly represented below.

Survey
The research tradition of urban design is here mainly based on design as applied science. Research underpins practical design interventions in specific situations. This research is done along the lines of the survey (Patrick Geddes: 'Survey before plan').

Encyclopaedic approach
In the same period as Geddes formulated his stand, there also existed an encyclopaedic approach, concerned with the definition of the discipline. The encyclopaedic tradition entered the urban design field in books (Brinckman and Stubben), and in several congresses.

Social-constructivist approach
To the extent that there was a theoretical side, it was founded on a social-constructivist base, like in the CIAM congresses. These congresses led to a formulation of basic assumptions, values, methodological strategies, etc. This approach shows resemblance with the theory of scientific dynamics (Kuhn, 1962) and with the theory of scientific development in 'loci-of-debate' (Toulmin, 1972). The congresses led to the 'filling-in' of a disciplinary matrix for urban design.

Planning research
Gradually a form of urban design based on functionalism was developed, mainly by the use of the functionalist 'categoriality'. Important features where the survey, empiric research, the use of statistics etc. The values where progressive and aimed at improving the urban environment. A main methodological value was that results had to lead to 'predictability'.

Urban-physical research
The research of urban standards was also done as urban-physics research, mainly aimed at the relation between allotment and the access of sunlight. Later noise and energy became additional fields of research. Gradually this research became more based on physics and less applied.

Reflexive research
Beside these forms of empiric-realistic research, that gradually became more theoretical and mathematical, there existed a reflexive line. This line can hardly be mantioned as theoretical-systemetical. It was a mixture of social analysis and criticism, of the transference of doctrines and values, critics, bureau-philosophies and personal stands. In recent years, this approach gained the interest of architecture-historians.

Conceptual research
The reflexive approach is connected with the urban-conceptual research. By this we mean the development of concepts like -in urban design- the garden city, the functional city, the neighbourhood ideal and -in spatial planning- concepts like the compact city, agglomerations and corridors. Zonneveld mentions that the formation of such concepts (as the development of conceptual complexes), is comparable to 'research-programmes' in Lakatos theory of science (Zonneveld, 1991).

The three stakes
At the end of the 20th century we see a new orientation within the urban-design research tradition. This reorientation is connected to the search for new presuppositions, basic values, scientific and professional values and methodological ideas after a period that was strongly determined by 'modern thinking'. This is mentioned as a paradigm shift; from modernism to post- and post-post-modernism. The assumption is that modernism has encountered its borders and that the limitation to the recognizeability and the makeability of the urban objects (if using modernistic approaches) has become evident. The city appears to be more than a functional organism, distinguishable in the categories of housing, work, recreation and transport and makeable by blue-prints and masterplans.

In regard to landscape theory, Turner has stated that three 'stakes' where driven into its heart by modernism: geography, functionalism and empiricism (Turner, 1996). A parallel whith the urban 'theory' seems apparent. In urban design there is at moment a strong orientation on postmodern geography, in order to enrich the modernist-geographic approach which uses a purely abstract conception of space: from space to place. Referring to postmodern geography, the city or urban space can be considered as an historical-social-spatial phenomenon. This shift from space to place concerns the functionalist interpretation of reality: the city is not just function, but also form and space that is perceived, conceived and lived or 'real-and-imagined' (Soja 1996, 2000). Morphology, meaning and image-quality should be directive in urban design.

Also the dominance of an empiric research approach is questioned: the urban designer is a researching designer, (s)he experiments, the city is his/her laboratory. Urban research however is not just spatial-scientific research in the sense of planning research, striving for empirical testing of models as representations of the urban reality. Soja renders in his trialectics that the urban space is to complex (full of politics, symbols, imaginaries and perceptions) to represent in a (mathematical) model (Soja 1996).

Development of science
It is strange that this reorientation on geography has led to a notion that the urban design discipline has ceased to exist or stopped to develop. In geography a similar discussion is held, in which the 'end of geography' is posed, due to developments in ICT and the globalization of the world. Ed Soja rejects this pose and states: "Rather than disappearing or weakening, the embracing of geography or spatiality of human life is being significantly restructured, organized and experienced in new and different ways that we are only beginning to understand" (Soja, 1998). Globalization, ICT, flexibilization of productionprocesses, labormarkets and associated developments also provide urban design with new (design) questions. It is needed to critically consider the notion that the urban disign discipline has ceased to exist or doesn't develop anymore, because this notion is connected to a specific view on science development.

In regard to science development there are roughly two visions: 1. A period in which a certain paradigm controls thought and in which there is progress of insight and development of knowledge, is a period of science development. 2. A period as an intervening period, a transition from one paradigm to another, a shift in time, is a sign of science development. The first vision is expressed by T.S. Kuhn, whose thinking is often connected with development and dynamics, because he talks about 'scientific revolutions' (Kuhn, 1962). Yet these revolutions are rather seen as transitions from one science to another. McAllister also deals with this scientific revolutions, especially in regard to aesthetics (McAllister, 1996). The second vision is expressed by S.H. Toulmin, who states that scientific development takes place during paradigm shifts (Toulmin, 1972). Science develops evolutionary. A brief account of the visions on science development of Kuhn, McAllister and Toulmin is given below.

Thomas Kuhn ascertains that the usual way of committing science (assuming contemporary scientific achievements), is not appropriate to understand the problems and solutions of the past. Kuhn ascribes this to 'scientific revolutions'. Between these revolutions there are relatively stable periods of unanimity between researchers; not caused by consensus about rules and defenitions, but mainly because students learn by selected examples or paradigms, in which theory, law, utilization and instrumentation interconnect (Kuhn, 1962. Russel, 1995). Revolutions arise when in periods of normal science a theory is refined. This refinement may bring anomalies to light, which usher in a period of great uncertainty and obscurity. When as a result of the anomaly a new situation has come into being, a new way of thinking, a new theory, a new period of normal science commences.

In a period of normal science a group of researchers share a 'disciplinary matrix', containing the whole of symbolic generalisations, metaphysic presuppositions and models, values and selected examples (the actual paradigms). During scientific revolutions total theories (paradigms) are replaced by different theories. During a scientific revolution the distinguished conception apparatus is incommensurable and diverge the criteria with which paradigm's can be assessed. In this situation it is unclear how a new paradigm can objectively be better than the old, abandoned paradigm. From Kuhns' perspective it seems that only social-psychic factors can explain the transition of perspectives.

McAllister tries to rationalize scientific revolutions by reversing cause and effect as Kuhn sees it. McAllister explains the rationality of scientific revolutions from the position of aesthetic values and preferences. The main notion is the 'aesthetic feature'; features that are immanent to a certain object and evoke an aesthetic reaction in observers, and thereby determine whether observers project beauty upon the object. McAllister claimes that every researcher takes a set of aesthetic criteria into account when forming theories. According to McAllister an innovative theory is considered 'ugly' when introduced. When such a theory appears to be empirically successful, it will increasingly be regarded as beautiful. This leads to aesthetic induction. A new theory, with different aesthetic features will only be accepted when the old theory, with its beloved features no longer appears to be empirically successful. Aesthetic preferences are in this vision a conservative power in judging and play a curbing role during a revolutionary crisis.

The conception that urban design has stopped to develop can partly be explained by this aesthetic approach. The new paradigm, albeit it has just started, is already empirically accepted (or at least considered promising) but urban design has not yet found an aesthetic hold on the new paradigm. This, among others, explains the strong orientation of urban design on fields as post-modern geography and philosophy.

Stephen Toulmin uses an evolutionistic model to explain changes within the scientific disciplines. The scientific field is formed by a population of concepts, which derives its continuity from slowly changing goals and ideals, in which conceptual changes occur fast and discontinuous. Concepts are the elements of variation and selection. Contrary to Kuhn's model, Toulmin states that change is normal and constancy needs explanation. Toulmin unravels scientific revolutions to successions of conceptual changes.

Toulmin places the development of a discipline in an ecological niche of disciplinary, professional and social preconditions, in wich variants have to fit. The process of variation is subject to intern-scientific as well as extern-scientific influences, but selection is only determined intern-scientific. Urban design as practical and society-oriented discipline depends for selection also on extern-scientific processes, such as economy and technological innovation.

In an evolutionary model of science development the 'rationality-problem' takes a paradoxical position. Evolution cannot be explained by reason, but only by cause. In science however reason is very important. Toulmin tries to grapple with this dilemma in two ways: 1. By separating discipline and profession he tries, analogously, to separate reason and cause. 2. By researching rational decisions concerning conceptual changes of researchers, instead of the reconstructed, formal conceptsystems. These rational decisions about conceptual changes are, according to Toulmin, taken in discussion fora (loci-of-debate), but can also be taken in workshops (loci-of- design).

When science development occurs in a 'shift of time' as in the second model, this means that diverse scientific values, basic assumptions, presuppositions and methodological ideas are confronting each other. The composition of the scientific matrix of a discipline is than paradoxical. Exactly this is a sign of scientific development. In this vision there is in times of reorientation and the expiring of a paradigm no matter of stagnation or disappearance of a discipline. It seems that urban design mostly adheres to the first vision, in which is stated that urban design has no 'body of knowledge' anymore. It is meant that the existing 'body of knowledge' (or in McAllisters vision 'body of aesthetics') has dissolved. The second vision concentrates not on the redevelopment of a 'body of knowledge', but rather on the multiformity of the urban design research-field, in which differing paradigms can assemble. Instead of a 'body of knowledge' a 'field of knowledge' is distinguished. This 'field of knowledge' fits better to the layered and multiform composition and multidisciplinary attitude of the (post-modern) urban design discipline.

Approaches in urban design
Can we try to map this 'field of knowledge'? At the end of the 20th century we can map several approaches within the urban design research tradition. We focus on the research that claims to be scientific on a theoretical level.

The following approaches can be delimited: This last approach is a powerful trend in the urban design research tradition. This approach is still under development and therefore vulnerable for misunderstandings; such as that every design could be a scientific product. Here we confine ourselves to some important motives of this type of research: Research by design also has problematic sides. It can easily lead to speculative approaches, fantasising, untestable and ungeneralisable knowledge and modelmaking. The designer could become more central than the paradigm that is developed in a scientific group in a critical-researching and intersubjective process. Also there is the temptation to look for scientific character in abstract designmethodologies and -methods. In that case process is getting more important than content and is procedure prevailed upon substance. When the urban design discipline wants to develop research by design as a activity with its own scientific recognition- and output-criteria, than a scientific demarcation of the urban design discipline is needed in relation to: The design-disciplines could be a delta-science, using design as interconnection between alpha, beta and gamma cultures, immanent to the layered urban design discipline. This demarcation needs a solid philosophy of science; it can't be confined to scientific dilettantism, the fascination for designing, the simple equation designing=research or abstract design methods. The, mainly among architects, stated notion that even education in design-studios is research, needs a critical approach.



Literature
T.S. Kuhn. The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962
J. McAllister. Beauty and revolution in science. London. Cornell University Press. 1996.
B. Russel. "Paradigms lost: paradigms regained, The paradigm project and Porthmouth". Article in: Educating Architects. Edited by M. Pearce and M. Toy. London. Academy Editions.1995
E.W. Soja. Thirdspace. Oxford. Blackwell Publishers. 1996
E.W. Soja. Digital communities, simcities, and the hyperreality of everyday life. Transarchitectures; conf. paper, 1998.
E.W. Soja. Postmetropolis. Oxford. Blackwell Publischers. 2000
S. Toulmin. Human understanding. Oxford University Press, 1972.
T. Turner. City as landscape: a post-postmodern view of design and planning. London. E&F Spon. 1996
W.A.M. Zonneveld. Conceptvorming in de ruimtelijke planning. Amsterdam . UvA. 1991.

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