A studio exercise designed to question the concept of originality: An approach to research in architectural education

İnan A. D., İmamoğlu B.

A|Z : ITU JOURNAL OF FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, vol.20, no.1, pp.233-246, 2023 (Scopus)

Abstract

What are the possible grounds for practicing ‘research’ in design studio? Design studios have a tendency to assume that the ‘research’ and ‘design’ happen independently and they contemplate each other intuitively. In this paper, this assumption will be challenged through presenting and discussing a year-long studio exercise for a house design in the second-year level, where ‘researching others’ design work’ is defined as the fundamental component of the given design problem, as dominant over other usual ones such as program, scenario, function, context, etc. The objective is defined as a quest into the diverse and variable interrelations of practices of design and research, in which, not only the design process is defined in majorly research-based means, but research is also redefined as something designed in a highly individual and subjective act. In this frame, the paper will largely discuss the notion of ‘originality’ as a prominent topic in architectural design and design teaching, through questioning the varying means of referring as design actions; such as ‘quoting’, ‘adapting’ or ‘appropriating’; or even generating a ‘cover’, a ‘sample’ or a ‘variation’ in design studios.