Swedish Architecture Theses Project

Is academic research in areas of design practice in different from other models of academic research in other disciplines?

International collaboration

The Swedish Architecture Theses (2007-2008) project was led by Dr Daniela Büchler, co-organized by Prof Lars-Henrik Ståhl and was funded by the Swedish Institute Guest Scholar Programme.

It was hosted at the Institute of Architecture and Built Environment, LTH, University of Lund.

Research Project Outline  

The project set out to identify whether academic research in areas of design practice is different to more dominant models of academic research in other disciplines.

This raised 3 preliminary outcomes:

• Identify, within the sample of PhD theses on architecture from Sweden, examples where the traditional research criteria satisfy and did not satisfy the needs that are expressed in the areas of design practice.
• Evaluate whether any inadequacies in the dominant models of academic research are due to the nature of design practice and the particular concepts that are adopted in these areas, and whether, in the case of the adequacy of the dominant models of academic research, this agreement is due to the existence of shared concepts between these dominant models of research and design practice activities.
• Make recommendations for ways of bringing similar, albeit terminologically different, concepts closer and ways of reconciling those concepts that are fundamentally opposed to one another.  

Aims  

Our was to develop the ontology for Practice-based Research which contributed to Hertfordshire-Lund projects Academic research in areas of design practice (AR-DP) and Arts-based research.  

Preliminary Outcomes    

In order to develop the PbR ontology, there were 3 preliminary outcomes:

• Mapping of Swedish theses, organising and statistically analysing the sample in terms of areas/disciplines; researcher background; location/universities and thematic focus.
• Conducting a literature review of models of research, history of ideas and/or theories of academicisation of knowledge that are discipline-specific, i.e. favoured in the sciences, humanities, etc.
• Developing a general ontology of academic research, i.e. fundamental definitions of concepts, structure and regulations for conducting academic research across all disciplines.