Engagement as a 'third way'

Jemma Browne suggests an external examiner for my final thesis: Flora Samuel, head of Sheffield School of Architecture – I need to start reading whatever she has written on Practice and Community.  But what about Jeremy Till?

Sam Jacob, former FAT director, writes in AJ241/16 – p.59 (01.05.15):  “If we trace the history of democracy back to its Athenian origins we find the city and its citizens were all intertwined in the idea of the polis.  And maybe, even in the 21st century, this is where the real political arena lies: not in the institutions and mechanisms of democracy, but in the world that they try to shape.  The city and the landscape we inhabit: that is the living force of politics, the real shared space of democracy; that is where everyday life and abstract ideological, economic and social ideas intersect.  Could we imagine the city as the map and the territory of democracy?  The product of and also the site of participation, discussion, and engagement, the common ground of the collective polis?  This, I would argue, is the real design project of democracy: to make our cities places of open engagement where we come together and actively participate in society.”

It’s not simply an simplistic duality (ie questionable because suggesting a binary opposition) between socialism and capitalism, but there is a common ground – eg life in the built environment.  This might be presented not as two intersecting circles, accordingly, but more like Ebenezer Howard’s ‘three magnets’ diagram: with practice / community / engagement pulling ‘the people (who don’t wish to go anywhere) – how will they influence/control (the development of) their environment?’ in different directions.  This could be my DArch poster – resolving issues of what is materially ‘real’ and what is merely a ‘social construct’ (as if different), though perhaps not actually answering the question I wish my research to address.

This idea of engagement as ‘a third way’ seems to be offered in Manuel DeLanda’s lecture ‘Assemblage Theory, Society and Deleuze’ (European Graduate School, 2011) – a clear expression of ‘speculative realism’ voiced by an ex-professor from Columbia University School of Architecture, New York.  On the other hand (at 1.04hrs in this talk), DeLanda identifies the ‘double self’ – a binary opposition of the kind to which he earlier raised objection: a) the (private) self acting as an observer/listener, the perceiving/contemplating persona, structuring experience (eg I suggest, deployed in undertaking objectified quantitative research), in contrast to b) the same (but public) self acting as a participant/speaker – the persona who interacts with others (eg I suggest, deployed in undertaking action research), who has ‘the other’ as a pole to which the persona is presented, constructing/expressing the persona in relation to other people via choice of subject/words and tone (giving information about the kind of person one is).

Floundering: how does one approach 'literature review'?

In order to be able to demonstrate mastery of the subject-area in due course, I need to develop a consistent and searchable method for tracking my critique of the literature I now need to start reading (so that it’s not all about attaching coloured Post-It notes etc on hardcopies of everything, and then trying to find them).  Can I combine the identification of my sources via RefWorks software with comments upon the texts?  I need some headings for such comments – eg:

Ÿ          type = methodological / professional / academic material

Ÿ          quality = form, status, or validity of source

Ÿ          author = academic / practitioner / other (and their philosophical standpoint)

Ÿ          subject = business development / community engagement / reflections

Ÿ          summary of arguments

Ÿ          comment on arguments

Ÿ          useful quotations (incl. definitions)

Ÿ          references to other texts

My initial instinct is to set up an Excel spreadsheet for this, enabling me to re-order the data whenever I need lists of similar information.

Initial Philosophical Reflections

For presentation to professional doctorate colleagues, I have been obliged to put together a statement describing where I’m coming from (personally and philosophically) in framing an approach to my proposed research.  My starting-point is my role as architect/teacher: perhaps this reflects a perennial conflict within the RIBA – whether its mission is to promote architects (with business objectives) or architecture (with a social dimension).  Accordingly I lead a double-life as both Director of 2hD Architects, a small firm seeking to grow its business in the interests of spending proportionately more time on design than on administration, and as a Senior Lecturer in NTU School of Architecture seeking to enthuse and equip a new generation of practitioners.

What I teach – consistent with how I practise – is the importance of taking nothing for granted / questioning everything (eg challenging the brief) but instead always applying creative imagination in the exercise of the required sensitivity (design and management skills) and in the deployment of technical and professional knowledge.  This habit of ‘making strange the familiar’ (I must locate the origin of this quotation – slide 80 in today’s workshop) turns out also to be an essential ingredient in approaching the DArch research: I am required to identify a ‘methodology’ suited not only to my research question but also to my beliefs (‘ontology’) and values (‘axiology’).  It is a remarkable and fortunate coincidence that my practice, my teaching, and now my research also, all permit me to express the same characteristic – rooted somewhere deep in my personal identity / psyche.

Not objectivist but objectionable: I am aware that I habitually adopt and express a deliberately oppositional or sceptical stance in immediate (unthinking) response to every idea I encounter, which I then seek to post-rationalise – often masking any antisocial negativity through an idiosyncratic kind of fanciful logic that I describe as ‘experimental hermeneutics’ (a surrealistic cabaret performance in the tradition of Alfred Jarry).  Clearly, this reflects what educationalists would term a ‘social constructivist’ ideology – suggesting that individuals should be permitted (and encouraged) to create their own world-views.   A fundamental democratising ‘mission’ underpins my teaching objectives, my design concepts, and my aspirations for the role of architecture in relation to society: as a child of the 1960s, I remain committed to ‘power to the imagination’ – my core belief is that people should be empowered to re-make the world around them in accordance with their needs and aspirations.

The same instinct must therefore shape the approach I now adopt to my research: its relevance must stem from an emphasis upon making a change rather than merely observing, upon re-framing rather than simply explaining – demanding a focus upon the future (and how we can influence it) rather than a retrospective (as if hoping at least to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past).  Such an open-ended attitude to the future, aiming to provide maximum room for potential action, demands the ‘suspension of disbelief’ that characterises what I promote as the most effective kind of design processes: this involves not taking decisions until as many parameters have been taken into account as programme and budget permits, in order to accommodate and reconcile as many conflicting requirements and considerations as possible, so that nothing needs to be added afterwards as an ‘afterthought’ – the model being a classical definition of aesthetic integrity (Aristotle ‘Poetics’) as the condition where nothing can be added or removed without spoiling the whole).

In the same way, my research process must (in its initial phases at least) involve consideration of evidence before the formulation of coordinating theory - an ‘inductive’ approach.  How one selects this evidence must therefore proceed upon the basis of something that might be called ‘non-theory’ (I must find out if it is!) – borrowing an appropriately sceptical and paradoxical concept from postmodernist thinkers such as Bruno Latour (in the attractively disreputable ‘continental philosophy’ tradition).  I would propose to adopt an essentially pragmatic approach, temporarily accepting whatever material becomes available ‘at face value’ and not closing down options for its interpretation until the last possible moment – perhaps I need to call this ‘delayed interpretavism’, and perhaps this also represents ‘speculative realism’.

Lots of long words, but perhaps academically appropriate in clarifying one’s philosophical standpoint before the research process begins.  It is not a standpoint that emerges from the material, but one that (I hope) may serve to shape what kind of material we look for, and will certainly determine how we analyse the evidence we gather.  After that, perhaps, one may reflect more productively on whether or not the initial ontology/axiology/epistemology was a useful tool for unlocking new insights.  In this sense, the research may be regarded as testing not some hypothesis but a methodology.

I arrive at last at a research strategy.  The next step is to undertake a review of the literature – a) to explain and support my proposed methodology, and b) to outline the scope of my study-area by defining key concepts and demonstrating where further work is required (in order to justify the need for my proposed contribution to the field).  In terms of my DArch programme, this will be ‘Document 2.’

I will then (in DArch ‘document 3’) seek answers to the question ‘who has managed to combine community ethos and practice development most successfully, and how have they done this?’ – looking in particular at the techniques deployed in relationship to community engagement.  I have a hunch, however, that the overall conclusion to my research will be that it is not actually these techniques that matter the most in terms of business growth, but other ‘secondary’ activities associated with community projects – such as the opportunities for publicity and marketing that such projects represent.  My methodology at this stage will be the objectivist case study, concluding with comparative evaluation of the firms’ facts and figures, in order to discover whether there are any common factors characterising the best/worst performers in terms of business growth.  The topics covered by the case study will have emerged from my review of the literature (commenced in ‘document 2’ but continuing in the interests of maintaining currency).

DArch ‘document 4’ will then test the ‘success factors’ (but not the ‘failure factors’ – on the grounds that this would be practically unrealistic, being commercially undesirable, if not also socially unethical).  The testing would involve me in Action Research, using one or two 2hD projects as an opportunity to try out certain community engagement techniques (and perhaps some of the other ‘secondary’ activities associated with them) in order to double-check their effectiveness as tools for business growth.

At some point in what currently feels like a long-distant future, I will finally be able to draft some conclusions in respect of what works, what kinds of approach or activity to avoid – DArch ‘document 5.’  If summarised in terms of recommendations for the profession (whether as ‘principles’ to be adopted, or as a ‘process’ to be followed – perhaps in a form suitable for insertion into a practice’s quality manual).  Perhaps at that point, I will at last have begun to bridge the great divide in the profession between the private pursuit of commercial interests and the public exercise of social responsibility.

“In the profession” only?  This is surely what yesterday’s election was all about – a choice between whether we should govern ourselves in accordance with socialistic or capitalistic values.  Does this make me a ‘liberal democrat’, I begin to wonder?

The collaborative economy as cradle for social innovation

An essay on ‘the internet of things’ by Rakesh Ramchurn in a recent AJ (03.04.14 – vol.241, issue 13, p.55) introduces a term not previously encountered – the collaborative economy, the rise of which is said to mirror “the interconnectivity of social media by allowing resources to be pooled for mutual benefit... ‘a sharing economy is essential for the creation of new ideas’, says Nic Clear, head of the department of architecture and landscape at the University of Greenwich.  ‘Reliance on the market brings none of the supposed benefits that are often claimed; markets do not foster greater innovation, competition, efficiency or equality.  Only cooperation and collaboration achieve those goals.’  Here, perhaps, is a link between the ‘social innovation’ that Tom Fisher is suggesting I investigate, and the situation of small architectural practices – “studio culture will still exist but in a reconfigured form, where small practices or freelance individuals share physical resources such as premises, IT infrastructure, specialist technologies and technical support.”

And this week’s AJ (17.04.15 – vol.241, issue 13, p.47) features a new architectural practice ‘Lateral North’ :

“Our work is mainly community-based, developing a project from the business plan all the way through to completion, ensuring that all the time the community’s interests are at the heart of the project... Our biggest marketing tools are presentations, workshops and exhibitions...this has ensured we get new work delving into different disciplines.  We also use social media a lot to get our work out there.”

A good precedent for the proposed seminar I organise at OTS, which Tom Fisher has endorsed this week.

UK architecture's political location moves closer to 'community'

Further evidence of the new topicality of ‘community’ in relation to architecture?  I read in AJ 27.03.15 (p.18) Paul Finch reporting on a rumour that – as a result of the Farrell Review – governmental responsibility for architecture is to be moved from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the (more powerful) Department for Communities and Local Government, where it will sit alongside housing, planning and sustainability: just weeks before the election but good, from the profession’s point of view, as it was DCMS who scrapped CABE in April 2011, whereas DCLG were relatively supportive of CABE (aiding its merger with the Design Council “where the flag is still flying for architectural and urban quality.”

In the same issue (p.22), it is noted by Hattie Hartman that the Newcastle University MArch students’ ‘Stargazing Pavilion’ in Stonehaugh (recently shortlisted for the AJ Small Projects award) was “noteworthy for the students’ extensive engagement with local villagers throughout design and construction.”

And on p.51, Meredith Bowles (of Mole Architects, Cambridge) observes that “for centuries buildings were made as they were required, which Paul Oliver describes as ‘by the people, but not for the people.’  The resulting houses, streets and neighbourhoods are delightfully human in scale.  It is these places that people seek while travelling – places that are good to walk in and for meeting and observing others...  Unfortunately, the author proceeds to argue that “good design can only be achieved by good designers, and then only if they are employed early enough to make a substantial difference...” – the technocratic (designing around the principles of walkable neighbourhoods – as advocated by Jan Gehl and the New Urbanists) returns to displace the democratic.

'Ladder of participation' theory

Talking to Brian Smith about the similarities between the community engagement/practice relationship that I am interested in, and his work on political engagement (now just started in the purdah period leading up to the election) / civil service policy development, he refers me to Sherry Arnstein’s ‘ladder of citizen participation’ concept’ first outlined in American Institute of Planning (AIP) Journal July 1969:

Ÿ          Ÿ citizen control            user-owned

Ÿ          delegated power       user-led                      degrees of citizen power

Ÿ          partnership                  user-partnered

Ÿ          placation                       user-involved

Ÿ          consultation                user-consulted          degrees of tokenism

Ÿ          informing                      user-informed

Ÿ          therapy                          user-placated             non-participation

People-centred design

 Prof. Jeremy Myerson from the RCA Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design speaking at NTU described ‘empathy and experiment’ as key attributes for designers working with people (not doing things to them but with them) – at all scales.  He identified Henry Dreyfuss as the original people-centred design pioneer – suggesting we need to inhabit the mindset of users (eg farmers not wishing to walk their muddy boots over the plush carpets laid out by RKO cinemas in the mid-west).  He quoted Alan Fletcher (twice): “artists solve their own problems, designers solve other people’s:” what designers need to do is to solve the right problem.  Thus Jens Bernsen’s exhibition was called ‘Design – the Problem comes First’ – suggesting a good problem is a gift for a designer.  He quoted the following “double diamond model” from the UK Design Council.

He described the community architecture movement of the ‘70s as having developed a poor reputation due to its participants’ beards and sandals, but argues that ‘design is not watered down by user participation but the opposite’.  Design skills need to include an ability to get people to participate, to become active participants in the process; unfortunately, designers have a tendency to look for negatives, things that need to be ‘fixed’ (eg graffiti, hoodies, derelict buildings), rather than engaging in more positive ‘asset-mapping’ – as done in the Kentish Town Forum consultation exercise: a circle is drawn, and specific spaces, groups of people, etc are located nearer or further away from the centre (which represents where the power lies).  The participatory mindset demands a focus upon what the real problems are: for example, the SHPARCED  project for Kensington High Street was not welcomed by locals (demanding kerbs as ‘sight lines’), although it was much loved by CABE.  He mentioned ‘levels of user involvement’ (see reference to Sherry Arnstein below) and Alan Fletcher's   THIS WAY UP  (upside-down) / DOWN WITH DOGMA

When testing what elderly people want in terms of remote-access sensors, it was found that they would be happy for sensors to be located on the TV/stairlift / kettle / thermometer / microwave, but not on WC-flushes nor for room-use: ‘we all want inclusive environments, but do we know who’s being included?’  Iain MacD declared at the end “in the commercial sector, consultation is a luxury”.  The response was that you don’t need huge population studies (eg ethnographic survey) to undertake a design study – just pick a group fo participants and run a ‘day in the life of...’ study.

Post-colonialism as a possible methodology

Picking up from Nikki Linsell’s attack on ‘Architecture for Humanity’ in Architects Journal 241.05 (06.02.15: p.57 – ‘To Hell with Good Intentions’), I read that critical regionalism is viewed by Jane Jacobs as a “revisionary form of imperialist nostalgia ... ”  I find this is a quotation from ‘Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City’ (Routledge, 2002 - p.15), and appreciate that a ‘post-colonialist’ viewpoint offers another important perspective on cultural an spatial processes.  In her chapter on ‘(Post)Colonial Spaces,’ the author asserts that        

“the ‘postcolonialisms’ described hereafter are not always neatly ‘against’ colonialism’s residual and revived formations, part of the seductive realm of resistance.  I do not deny the possibility of resistance but instead I suggest that it is one articulation of many which work against or slip outside of colonialism.  The colonised engage not only in resistance but also in complicity, conciliation, even blithe disregard.  It is a revisionary form of imperialist nostalgia that defines the colonised as always engaged in conscious work against the ‘core’. ” 

Successful architects' practices and community engagement

01       In an e-mail to AJ 13.02.15 (vol.241, issue 06, page 13), Beth Worth – a trustee of Architecture for Humanity (an organisation worth incorporating in to this research perhaps) – notes that “Assemble, Studio Weave and Architecture 00 are young practices working on smaller-scale community projects and public-space institutions.”

02       Speaking at NTU this evening, Freddie Phillipson of Witherford Watson Mann observed that architects like themselves (with a commitment to the improvement of public rather than private space) usually win public space projects through participation in competitions.  I think it was also this speaker who described his practice’s work under three separate headings: a) ambitions and approaches, b) actions and achievements, and c)broader cultural offer to the community.

Outline of research proposal

The requirement to submit a 1000-word ‘research proposal’ to accompany my resubmitted application form takes a little longer – one of my difficulties being the need to reduce the length of the text in order to comply with the word-limit, a task I always find difficult.  I am also conscious that an exercise similar to this does in fact represent DArch ‘Document 1’ – so I feel obliged to take special care with its wording, imagining that this is what I will need to build upon over the next four months.  In the version set out below, I have indicated in brown the parts of the text that were omitted in the finally submitted text (which also takes up Tom Hughes’ suggestion that I begin with a large generalised issue rather than one narrowly related to our particular architectural practice):

Practice and Community: how can involvement in community development enable architectural practices to grow their business?

01

The UK government’s current ‘Localism’ agenda, coupled with the slimming down of the planning system through the National Planning Policy Framework, seeks to encourage local communities to lead the development of their built environment.  In support of such policies, the RIBA is keen to help architects recognise this as a potential business opportunity.  Engagement with the public over the development of a brief would be a new role for many practices however, demanding knowledge of unfamiliar techniques and tactics (the subject not even now featuring in the prescribed curriculum for schools of architecture).

I would start from the assumption (which would need to be tested) that smaller practices tend to develop closer ties to the community in which they are located, and are therefore enabled to become more deeply and successfully involved in such development projects than larger practices, but that they are often required to operate pro bono, at cost or at risk (in the hope of the work turning into a ‘real job’) – resulting in perpetuation of poor resourcing, and a consequent inability to increase the size of projects they undertake.  My proposed research would therefore aim to help professional colleagues feel more confident about the business sense of engaging in community development projects.

02

My professional context is the architectural practice that I help run, and its strategy for growth in terms of the size of projects we undertake.  We share a commitment to community engagement alongside our design processes, but this ethos is seen by my colleagues to be constraining our ability to expand beyond domestic-scale work – usually because of clients’ unwillingness to fund (even partially) what they regard as non-essential activity.  I wish to challenge this orthodoxy and to explore ways of winning the larger-scale projects we seek, not in spite of involvement with the communities in which they are located but as a positive outcome of such involvement.  My aim would be to identify the potential for attracting corporate rather than private clients (offering work associated with larger budgets and therefore demanding a greater amount of design-time), not merely without prejudicing the values we hold in respect of social sustainability, but actually because of the way we put them into practice.

03

Having framed my main research question, accordingly, as ‘how can involvement in community development enable architectural practices to grow their business?’ I would need to address two issues.  Firstly, why do there seem to be so few instances of engagement in community activity leading to the commercial expansion of a practice?  And secondly, in the few instances where such effects on a practice are reported, can that success be attributed to any particular features of the way in which the associated community projects were managed, or is it due to other features such as marketing or the architects’ relationship with their clients?  I am conscious of the risk built into these questions – such as initial failure to identify specific community projects which have resulted in the practice securing larger design commissions, and then the difficulty of distinguishing (in retrospect) between contingent ‘luck’ factors and a firm’s carefully targeted intentions.

Such risks might be more than offset, however, by the potential benefit of deriving a set of recommendations on how to manage community development exercises in ways that could work to a practice’s strategic advantage.  Of course, findings to the reverse could be equally useful to practitioners – confirming what kinds of community engagement may need to be terminated if a practice wishes to start winning larger commissions.

04

I would need to begin with some case studies of architectural practices which, having established an initial reputation for small-scale urban interventions in conjunction with community engagement, have subsequently begun to undertake larger projects. Firms such as Studio Weave, for example, are just beginning to move from the counter-cultural fringe to the ‘professional’ mainstream – I would need to identify two or three others of a similar nature in order to review the techniques they developed for running community projects (aiming to discover any common features).

I suspect that, as we emerge from a recession in the construction industry, now should be a good time to observe this phenomenon:  the architectural press carries such stories on a weekly basis.  For a longer retrospective however, I would also rely, however, upon my own substantial library of back-copies of architectural journals (covering the aftermath of the last major recession in the construction industry).

05

I would need to speak both to architectural project managers (one-to-one interview followed by invitation to comment on selected transcription) and to members of the community they worked with (focus groups followed by invitation to comment on a written summary – a copy of which would be offered to the architects as ‘feedback’).  Having used this kind of exercise to identify distinctive features about the way these particular firms ran (and continue to run) their community projects, I would then seek to test the application of these techniques in a community project run by the architectural practice with which I am now associated.

06

This would involve me in observing the experiment (and perhaps occasionally intervening in order to ensure the appropriate techniques are being applied) and monitoring the business outcomes for the practice – through quantitative analysis of the firm’s financial results and prospects.  I am familiar with Action Research as a data-gathering method, having applied it effectively in a significant research project in the health sector (‘A Case with Ten Handles’– SCOPME, 1996) – which coincidentally also centered around testing the implementation of unfamiliar principles within a professional context.

I am less familiar, however, with the kind of sensitivity analysis I anticipate would be required in order to identify which variables are the most significant in producing the desired effect (and which might be dismissed as merely contingent factors).  Experimenting in the context of a small, young practice with the ‘live’ application of techniques found useful by larger, more experienced practices should nevertheless enable me to formulate conclusions and recommendations for other practices seeking to expand their portfolio.

07

In a rather broader sense (but therefore with impact upon the curriculum I now promote through my teaching), I see my research as a contribution to the development of architectural culture away from emphasis upon its utopian modern movement origins as a form of art practice (championed by Le Corbusier, for example), and towards a stronger sense of responsibility for its social impact.  As Peter Plagens (US painter and art critic) has recently observed, “by its very nature, architecture tends toward the dictatorial, in the sense that, once built, we can’t not see it, or even, when an offending or inconvenient building arises in our own neighbourhood, avoid interacting with it.”  Arguably, it was in reaction to the impact of modernist architecture upon neighbourhoods that the ‘community architecture’ movement developed in the 1970s.

08

I would therefore propose first to seek the origins of this ethos in the seminal works of Paolo Freire (‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ – first published in English in 1970) and Ivan Illich (‘Tools for Conviviality’ – 1973), and then to explore the variety of ways in which ‘human geography’ may be theorised – adopting as my guide ‘Key Thinkers on Space and Place’ (2004, edited by Hubbard, P. et al).  For up-to-date thinking on developing and working with community organisations, the website Locality Brokers looks promising.

And the RIBA’s 2011 pamphlet “Guide to Localism Opportunities for Architects (part 2: getting community engagement right)” contains not only some key case studies but also a valuable list of websites related to the topic, which – as the publication demonstrates throughout – is currently of great interest to the profession. 

Motivation for undertaking the research programme

It turns out that I am required to submit a 1000-word ‘research proposal’ to get onto the DArch programme, in addition to re-visiting the application form – this time with the benefit of guidance notes.  So I rephrase my ‘personal statement’ with less description of my professional background and more of my personal motivation for wishing to embark upon the course:

“My wish to join the DArch programme relates to my background as a socially committed architect/teacher: my proposed research would enable me to draw together and round off several of the threads that I have picked up at different points through my career, in addition to pointing a way forward for the NTU School of Architecture which I joined in 2010. The need for this research was identified in a recent meeting of the local architectural practice that I help run: in developing a strategic plan for securing larger-scale projects, my co-directors have suggested they feel constrained by our commitment to community engagement, on the grounds that it is poorly funded and heavily dependent upon the occasional, short-term efforts of well-meaning amateurs and inconsistent volunteers (giving our practice a reputation for being outside the mainstream of the profession). I take the view, by contrast, that involvement in community development activities in accordance with our social sustainability ethos ought to operate to our commercial advantage (being a feature that helps give our firm its distinctive identity), but we know neither how to proceed nor even whether we should try.

My proposed Professional Doctorate, accordingly, would examine how community engagement might be reconcilable with the commercial aspirations of a small architectural practice - using my own firm as a test-bed for experimentation with different approaches. While I would like to believe that my research could lay foundations for a wholly new modus operandi for socially conscious architectural practices, I expect in reality to achieve at least some effect upon architectural education (with significant ramifications as I influence successive generations of graduates to enter the profession with a commitment to social sustainability). In parallel with – and supported by – my research accordingly, I would seek gradually to modify the character of the architecture programmes we offer at NTU – moving from emphasis upon architecture as a form of art practice (centred around an almost a-political fascination with phenomenology), towards a stronger sense of responsiveness to social context (requiring the teaching of techniques for successful community engagement). In due course, I anticipate, knowledge and skills related to social sustainability will become embedded in the prescribed curriculum for all UK Schools of Architecture: I would wish to be associated with such an important (and long overdue) development, and see the DArch as an opportunity to achieve this ambition.”

 The discipline of writing the above has been helpful in enabling me to respond to the first ‘activity’ in a book I’ve started reading – Potter, S. ed. (2002).  Doing Postgraduate Research.  London: Sage Publications, in which chapter 2 (“Getting Going’) demands first a description of motivations.  When I first read this, I had felt inclined to skip the exercise on the grounds that – at the age of 61 – outcomes in terms either of results or of expertise gained are not of interest to me (I’m not doing this for the benefit of my CV!).

Social sustainability — incompatible with a technocratic approach?

I read in Architectural Record 12.2014 (page 148) that “creating socially sustainable environments that improve the health and well-being of community members is now a given” – in a commercially sponsored article ‘A Placemaking Approach to Design.’  This is an instance of how sensitivity to community considerations has become part of the architectural mainstream.  On the other hand, the remainder of the article describes Prof. C C Benninger’s ten ‘principles of intelligent urbanism’ underpinning the curriculum at the School of Planning he founded in Ahmedabad in 1971 – and not one of them includes ‘bottom-up’ social sustainability.  What is celebrated instead is how “innovative architecture firm LEVENBETTS (sic) developed a visionary plan for a New Orleans community that had been hit hard by the hurricane” (p.151).  The principle of ‘conviviality’ promotes ‘third place’ areas “of social interaction outside the two primary areas of home and work” as envisioned in Ray Oldenburg’s book ‘The Great Good Place’ but it is asserted that “design can realize this goal” with no suggestion that members of the community should be involved.  Two other names are cited however – Jane Jacobs and William H Whyte, who “advocated for cities that catered not just to cars and shopping centers but also to people” (p.148): check these authors for quotes about involving citizens in the development of their environment. 

Denby and Allen — the feminine approach

Good to read Daisy Froud’s essay ‘Role Models’ in The Architects Journal 241.03 dated 23.01.15, discussing Elizabeth Denby (1894-) and Marjory Allen (1897-) as pioneers in the promotion of community engagement as a feature of architectural practice.  Denby’s “genuine understanding of how working communities lived, and wanted to live” is attributed to 10 years with a housing association in Kensington having studied social science at LSE, leading her to “focus on learning from, and involving the end-user in, design processes.”

The AJ mentions a 1942 article on her online in TheAJ.co.uk/WIA. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, by contrast, qualified as a landscape architect and “was responsible for bringing the ‘adventure playground’ concept to Britain, having encountered it in Denmark as part of research into childcare approaches...  she argued for it passionately, not just as a framework for more empowering and democratic play, but as an alternative model for London’s post-war reconstruction.”  In contrast to the technocratic, tabula rasa plans of individuals such as Abercrombie, she believed (like Denby – and unusual for the time) in a more incremental approach, with citizens being actively involved in the design process.

Potential sub-questions for the thesis

1. how, and to what extent, does involvement in community development constrain the growth of an architectural practice?
2. how might community development projects be run differently in order to enable architectural practices to grow?
3. how may architectural practices grow their business without ceasing to implement their social sustainability agenda?
4. are community development projects compatible with larger-scale architectural commissions?
5. what barriers do architectural firms typically encounter when they seek to increase the size of projects they undertake (and how might these be reduced)?

Thoughts following completion of PROJECT IDENTIFICATION AND PLANNING workshop

01       A good start, making the whole process I’m embarking upon seem manageable as a result of being a) highly structured and incremental, and b) rooted in practice rather than abstract academic speculation.  Plenty of academic rigour nevertheless, with a requirement to understand early whether my proposed approach is going to be phenomenological, psychological, Marxist, grounded theory, constructivist, positivist, etc – all of which I’ll need to read about first in order to be able to explain why I’ve adopted one methodology (is that the word?) rather than another. Must I confine myself to one (perhaps not, if two alternative ‘conceptual frameworks’ are to be explored in the interests of triangulation with my initial literature review)?  And might I try to develop ‘object-oriented ontology’ as an alternative to phenomenology, in fulfilment of previous research interests (a ‘speculative materialist’ methodology)?  I must make this the agenda of a meeting with my research supervisor in due course (when I begin to understand some of what I’m talking about), to discuss whether the methodology should come first and determine the research techniques I adopt, or whether I should identify what research techniques would be practical and frame my methodology accordingly.  The first port of call for this would seem to be the ‘wiki’ associated with the programme.

02       A sequence of actions has been suggested for immediate implementation, with some techniques for efficient working:
a)  complete the enrolment form, in order to acquire a student number which will give me access to the Learning Room.

b)  in Outlook, click on ‘Options’ and select “create new rule” in order to divert any course-related e-mails from my student e-mail address to my customary staff address chris.heuvel@ntu.ac.uk.

c)  in the NOW Learning Room, click top right for ‘Notifications’ and select any contents I wish to hear about whenever additional or updated information is provided.

d)  I really ought to set up this journal as a blog (enabling my supervisor to see what I’m up to at any time – and also available to all my Linked-In associates perhaps: yes, I must also revise my Linked-In profile, to publicise my new field of interest in the hope of generating some helpful suggestions).

e)  all these IT-related skills I will need to develop: I note that guidance is available via https://support.ntu.ac.uk/.  Above all, I appreciate how essential it will be to back-up the material I start saving/producing – in a systematic way from the outset.

f)  the suggestion is that I begin with Google.Scholar (which I’ve never used before) as a means of identifying the key terms associated with my proposed field of study.  These may then be used as ‘tags’ to be attached to any material I encounter, sorting it into headings (perhaps associated with different colours – related to highlighting pens or post-it notes).

g)  I then need to set up some RefWorks folders – corresponding to the selected headings: this will make referencing simple and fast.

h)  I should also consider developing, from the outset, a ‘glossary’ – to include acronyms (a good way of keeping the word count down, as the limit really is very strict).

03       The Learning Room contains an ‘Outline for Document 1’ template in which the required content is identified.  It has been suggested that it is good to complete the ‘ethics issues’ section first (to get it out of the way).  The BERA ‘Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research’ document contains a comprehensive list of the headings that ought to be addressed.  I have also been given a copy of the SLSA’s ‘Principles of Ethical Research Practice.’

04       Before deliberately seeking ‘existing literature in the field’ the suggested reading is Machi and McEvoy: ‘The Literature Review – Six Steps to Success’ (2nd edition, 2012).  Other recommended preliminary reading is on NOW, but note in particular Nancy Lee: ‘Achieving your Professional Doctorate’ and several books by a man called Wellington.  I have also been provided with print-outs of Trzeciak and Mackay: ‘Study Skills for Academic Writing (Student’s book)’ and Britton: ‘Learning to Write / Writing to Learn.’  Neither of the latter two (read later) seemed to offer any insights of the slightest value, however – I found them both rather superficial and simplistic.

05       When trying to draft a potential opening sentence (the ‘purpose statement’), I discover that perhaps my research question (23.01.15/02 above) is not so clear after all:

a)  what kind of inquiry is this?  (report / review / study etc – do I need some other models?  I don’t want it to be merely descriptive: for validity, perhaps of a vaguely Marxist nature, I want it to make a change to the situation.  Perhaps it will be what in the legal field would be called ‘reform-oriented research’ – interrogating and evaluating current practices, and offering recommendations for their improvement.
b)  what will I be trying to do?  (understand / develop / discover etc).  At this stage, where I hear candidates always seek to bite off more than they can chew, I feel I want to do all these things.

c)  what is to be the focus of my study?  Am I looking at community development projects (and perhaps how to run them differently)?  Or am I looking at architectural practices (and what kinds of activity might help them grow in terms of the size of project they are appointed to undertake)?  Again, the temptation is to say both.

d)  for whose benefit is this study being undertaken?  A little easier to answer perhaps – primarily, it’s for small architectural practices who wish to grow, but there will also be social benefits for the people who find themselves living in the vicinity of new architectural projects.

e) in what context is the study being undertaken?  Easier again – I’m confining my study to England/Wales/Northern Ireland, where architects may operate as members of RIBA.

06       When I start writing Document 1 (the Research Proposal), I should take care to use ‘styles’ to set up chapter headings first ( a Word function I’ve never used before – seems particularly efficient, as it will automatically generate ‘contents’ list , ‘tables’ list, etc): see 03 above for reference to guidance on headings.  As for references to page numbers within the text, use ♯ so that they can be quickly picked up and edited upon completion of the document (rather than needing to revise them frequently through its development).  I must confirm with my supervisor the preferred font, spacing, layout etc – the initial suggestion is that we use Verdana 11 with 1.5 line spacing.