Good Basis for Development

- Evaluation of the Design Research at the Schools of Architecture

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The design research at Denmark’s two schools of architecture has been evaluated by an international panel of design researchers. The schools, which have applied individual strategies for their design research in recent years, both intend to use the recommendations in the evaluation reports as a basis for future initiatives.

By Hans Emborg Bünemann

As part of a comprehensive evaluation of the design research in Denmark, an international panel of researchers has evaluated the design research at the two Danish schools of architecture and made recommendations to help the schools further develop their research in the future. The evaluation reports, which were published in October 2010, give the schools of architecture a good basis for developing their design research.

Excellence

“Research results of high international standard” and “excellent scientific dissemination”. These words of praise are quoted from the report about the design research at the Aarhus School of Architecture. The evaluation panel also finds that the Department of Design at the Aarhus School of Architecture has established “excellent scientific collaboration with other research institutions.”
The school’s rector, Torben Nielsen, is pleased with the evaluation and says that design research can help expand the field of architecture and enrich architectural research. For example, he observes that the design discipline and thus also design research move effortlessly across scale levels:
“In the design of new cell phone applications, the focus is both on the phone – design on a small scale – and on communication or, for example, city navigation – design on a large scale,” says Torben Nielsen.

Sven Felding, rector of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, does not view design research as an independent discipline but rather as a sub-discipline to architectural research. Photo: Torben Petersen

Two Strategic Approaches

The issue of the relationship of design research to the other research activities at the schools of architecture marks a clear strategic difference between the two schools of architecture. While the Aarhus School of Architecture has established a design research environment that is not related to architecture in a conventional sense, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen takes a deliberately architectural approach in their design research. Rector Sven Felding explains,
“We view design as a specialty on the advanced level of the architecture programme. In this perspective, working with design and design research requires an architectural point of departure.”

Artistic Development

The evaluation panel considers the strategy of the Copenhagen school – pursuing design research as a specialty branch under the discipline of architecture – “a sound and natural aim for the school being an architecture school”. The panel does, however, point out that the activities that the school characterises as design research belong rather in the category of artistic development. The mandate for the panel is to look exclusively at research, although in its report the panel does emphasise that artistic development, like research, is important to society in general and to architectural education in particular.

Peer Review as a Stamp of Quality

Here, the panel relies on a definition of research that is close to the one espoused by the Danish Ministry of Culture, which requires research to meet criteria of originality, validity and transparency. To ensure this, research methods and results must undergo a peer review process, where the research is assessed by members of the international research environment. One of the recommendations of the evaluation panel to the design researchers at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture is to increase the “transparency and clarity of theory and methods”, for example through “increased scientific publication in peer reviewed articles and conference papers”. Sven Felding says that after receiving the report, the school has already begun to draw up an action plan.
“In a joint effort involving the design researchers, the research directors and the rector, we are seeking to determine how we can achieve better documentation of our research activities in the future, including placing more articles in peer-reviewed publication channels,” he says.

Design research challenges the field of architecture and qualifies societal solutions across scale levels, says Torben Nielsen, rector of the Aarhus School of Architecture. Photo: Ejgil Lihn

Two-Edged Sword

The strategy applied by the Aarhus School of Architecture, which gives design research a relatively independent status as a field of research with its own department has been positive for the school, says the evaluation panel. “With the design research and design education based in the one and same institute, the organisational structure is fine and transparent,” says the report. Rector Torben Nielsen, however, sees this structure as a two-edged sword.
“On the one hand, we are blessed with a group of very strong design researchers, who have been able to create an internationally acknowledged research environment and demonstrate the justification of our design research, not least by standing out from the design research otherwise carried out in Denmark with regard to the prioritisation of research fields. For example, we have developed a strong competency in the field of interaction research and are currently engaged in a similar development with regard to strategic design research. But on the other hand, we face a challenge in ensuring that the various disciplinary areas of the school are able to enrich each other’s perspectives,” says Torben Nielsen. 

Barrier-Free Research

Based on these ideas about the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach in a modern research environment, the school’s management has decided to implement a structural change to strengthen interdisciplinary cooperation at the school.
“By dismantling organisational barriers we want to free up the interdisciplinary work to allow it to take on the character of experimentation,” he says and adds, “That will allow new interdisciplinary fields and new, unexpected knowledge to emerge. Essentially, the key is to provide the best possible conditions for research freedom.”