University of Nebraska - Lincoln

DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and
Architecture Program
Creative Activity

2017

Research Methods for Architecture (review)

Rumiko Handa
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, rhanda1@unl.edu

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Handa, Rumiko, "Research Methods for Architecture (review)" (2017). Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity.
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Rumiko Handa (2017) in Technology| Architecture + Design, 1:1, pp. 112-113
doi:10.1080/24751448.2017.1292802

Research Methods for Architecture

Ray Lucas
Laurence King, 2016
208 Pages
$35.00 (paperback)

Renewed interest in integrating research into design is apparent when

we look at books published on the topic in recent years. The go-to
textbook for more than a decade, Linda Groat and David Wang’s
Architectural Research Methods was revised and expanded in a recent
second edition (2013), reflecting such interest.1 The most important
area of update is on the relationship between design and research. In
particular, it explores research by design, that is, generating new
knowledge using design as a method, as do a number of other
publications. Among them are Design Innovation for the Built
Environment: Research by Design and the Renovation of Practice (2012),
edited by Michael U. Hensel, and Design Research in Architecture: An
Overview (2013), edited by Murray Fraser.2 The former is a collection of
pieces written by architects, designers, and thinkers from the United
States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and Europe. It offers an
emerging understanding that design and research have a shared
purpose that is projective in nature and presents research by design as
a way for design practice to engage in the production of new knowledge.
The latter brings together writings by researchers, practitioners, and
educators, many of whom are associated with the Bartlett School of
Architecture at the University College London. It serves also as an

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overview of a book series of the same title, which showcases a variety
of projects that take design as a form of inquiry. To those who are
accustomed to regarding design as an activity whose end product is a
discrete object, it is a revelation to consider the widening possibilities
of what design may accomplish. In the background of these publications
are an increasing number of professionals who are involved in research
as a part of their practice, either within a professional office or in
collaboration with academic or research institutions. As the Bartlett and
other schools such as the Harvard Graduate School of Design launch
new academic degrees in design research, other schools are adopting
design research into curriculum, in studios and in lecture/ seminar
courses, including my own institution.3 There even is a pedagogical
debate between proponents of design theses and those of research
studios, as David Salomon has outlined in his “Experimental Cultures:
On the ‘End’ of the Design Thesis and the Rise of the Research Studio”
in the Journal of Architectural Education.4
To the timely topic of architectural research, Ray Lucas has recently
authored Research Methods for Architecture. This review discusses the
book across three main attributes: its organization, depth of
explanation, and use of case studies. Lucas is a Senior Lecturer and the
Head of Architecture at the University of Manchester, where he teaches
courses in graphic anthropology and world urbanism as well as studios.
Lucas offers this book as a “handbook for research in architecture,”
whose aim is to “assist the reader in producing research that is distinctly
architectural in nature” (7–8). Lucas expects his book to be “primarily
focused on the student experience of research,” observing that many
students struggle with the research part of their courses (21, back
cover). I share and expect many others to share Lucas’s observation,
and I suspect the struggle to be rooted in the perceived contradictory
natures of design and research, which, articulated by David
Leatherbarrow, are their objects (creation of something totally new vs.
discovery of what already exists); their procedures (mysterious whim
of a creative genius vs. methodical process worked out beforehand); and
their time frames (future vs. present).5 The overarching question of the
book is, Lucas states, “What is research in architecture?” Lucas further
defines and justifies the book’s focus: “While technical and technological
research is both crucial and valid, the purpose of this book is to examine
the research methods appropriate to architectural humanities” (7). This
focus reflects Lucas’s own work: his prior publications are in
architectural phenomenology and anthropology, and on the topics of
film, drawing as notation, and so on. The book is made up of two parts.
The first part, consisting of seven chapters, lays out process, from
defining the research project to writing it up; the second covers in eight
chapters a diverse range of research topics, including material culture,
the politics of space, and ethnographic research, and varied methods,
from interview to mapping. Here, some readers may find it a
discrepancy to include social science or visualization in architectural

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humanities; however, Lucas’s purpose is clear: to develop “the role of
architecture as a discipline with an interest in the theory of spatial
production, the social role of space, and the historical context within
which we live” (7). Compared with Hensel’s and Fraser’s, Lucas’s
organization makes it easily adoptable as a textbook for a course in
architectural research.
A number of features are intended to make the book’s textual content
more accessible to the reader, which is especially effective in the event
it is adopted as a textbook for an undergraduate course. A full-page
photograph introduces each chapter. For example, the exterior metal
skin of the New Museum in Manhattan by Studio SANAA opens the
chapter on material culture, and the layers of ramps seen from above at
Norman Forster’s Berlin Reichstag leads the chapter on the politics of
space. These introductory photographs are taken by the author, as are
smaller illustrations throughout the book. Also helpful to the reader is
the use of sidebars, encased in gray-shaded boxes and inserted within
the main text. These sidebars vary in their content, however, and are
most effective when used either to explain and define terms or to
demonstrate academic style. If there had been more sidebars
throughout the book, the glossary at the end could have been
eliminated. Endnotes are sufficient for the most part, and the
bibliography should be helpful to readers interested in further readings
on a topic. Since the chapter topics are fairly discrete, greater usefulness
could be achieved by organizing the notes and the bibliography by
chapter. These organizational tactics matter greatly when the goal is to
facilitate the learning of the less trained reader.
The author’s style of writing is on target for the intended audience
with its uncomplicated grammar and easily accessible language. When
it comes to the content, however, further elaboration in several areas is
desirable, including deeper discussion of a particular concept or the
addition of concrete examples. To do this, the author may have
referenced past scholarship on research, such as Wayne Booth et al.’s
Craft of Research.6 For example, in chapter 1, “Defining Your Research
Question,” possible ways to find such a question are listed: a question is
given by an assignment; a gap in the literature prompts a question; or
one takes issue with the existing scholarship. Curiously, this list misses
the most common circumstance in which architects and other designers
find their question, that is, by identifying a problem in the real world.
This would have easily been amended with the intellectual framework
of conceptual problem à pure (basic) research versus practical problems
à applied research. In chapter 4, “Cross-Disciplinary Working,”
different modes of collaboration between architecture and other
disciplines are explained by “architecture and …,” “architecture of …,”
“architecture with …,” and “architectural …” (66–67). The classification
makes good sense and the nomenclature appears smart; however, a
concrete example for each of these collaborations, even in a brief

3
summary, would have greatly improved understanding and made the
material more accessible.
In the book’s second half, each of the chapters is divided into two
segments. The first segment provides a general discussion on a topic,
and the second segment is a case study, which is a research project
conducted in the past by the author and, in some cases, his
collaborators. Each project seems intriguing and interesting in itself;
however, as an apt representation of the topic the chapter title purports
to cover, the degree of its relevance varies. For example, chapter 11 is
titled “The Politics of Space,” in which the “Cultures of Legibility”
project is a case study, which was conducted by a collaboration between
the University of Edinburgh and the National University of Indonesia.
Interviews and mapping techniques were used to document how people
understood and navigated in the city. Only a page and a half of textual
explanation does not allow the reader to understand how this particular
project relates to the general topic of “the politics of space.”
Furthermore, without an explicitly stated research question, it is
difficult for the reader to understand the significance of maps and
photographs provided. Herein is the liability of the author’s decision to
draw cases exclusively from his own research projects. On the one hand,
there obviously are merits, including access to the materials
accumulated from the process and insights gained through his own
experience. The advantage is enormous, especially when instructors
who use the book as a textbook are familiar with Lucas’s work. On the
other, however, it creates serious limitations: the projects discussed are
rather small in number and comparatively narrow in scope, considering
the two titles mentioned earlier, both of which feature curated
assemblies of researchers and projects from a larger canvassing
process.
It would be a mistake to take this book as a comprehensive survey of
the types of research being conducted in today’s academy and
profession. It is not the author’s intention, either, as he states, “What is
research in architecture? The answer is not singular, of course, but as
multifaceted as the discipline of architecture itself” (7). With some
limitations discussed above, Lucas has provided students of
architecture, mainly university students but also practicing architects
interested in incorporating research into their work, a handbook for
research in architectural humanities. At the same time, he has also given
those who teach design research a glimpse at possibile threads to widen
the scope and methods of research in architecture.

Rumiko Handa, PhD, is a Professor of Architecture at the University of

Nebraska–Lincoln, where she also serves as interim Associate Dean of the
College. Rumiko is a former chair of the Graduate Committee for the College,
and she teaches Design Research, a required undergraduate course for
Architecture, Interior Design, and Landscape Architecture students. She also
offers coursework in design and theory.

4
Notes

1. Linda N. Groat and David Wang, Architectural Research Methods, 2nd ed.
(2002; New York: Wiley, 2013).
2. Michael U. Hensel, ed., Design Innovation for the Built Environment:
Research Bydesign and the Renovation of Practice (Abingdon: Routledge,
2012), and Murray Fraser, ed., Design Research in Architecture: An
Overview (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). See, e.g., David Leatherbarrow’s “The
Project of Design Research” in the former, and Johan Verbeke’s “This Is
Research by Design” in the latter.
3. Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and John A. Paulson
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) collaboratively initiated
a Master in Design Engineering (MDE) degree, beginning in fall 2016. The
two-year program is intended to hone skills and endow knowledge to solve
multiscale, complex, open-ended problems. The Bartlett School has
launched a new four-year undergraduate program that combines
Engineering and Architectural Design, starting in fall 2017.
4. David Salomon, “Experimental Cultures: On the ‘End’ of the Design Thesis
and the Rise of the Research Studio,” Journal of Architectural Education 65,
no. 1 (2011): 33–44.
5. Leatherbarrow, “The Project of Design Research” (note 2), 5–13.
6. Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of
Research, 3rd ed., Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).