Reorienting innovation: transdisciplinary research and building technology

Over fifty years ago at the RIBA’s 1958 Oxford Conference, discussions about architectural research and science posed seminal questions about the very nature of creativity in architectural research and education. Leslie Martin observed that research is the tool by which theory is advanced. For more than half a century, we have seen traces of scientific research fuelling the advancement of architectural knowledge and its feedback loops into practice. Yet, interrogations around how architectural creativity is affected by intersections with the sciences are not new. The Bauhaus, for example, sought to integrate scientific thought in architectural education in 1936. Thus, why are emerging interdisciplinary collaborations where architecture, engineering and science converge at the inception of design potentially transformative?

Increasing attempts to accelerate the pace of innovation in sustainable building technology is engendering pioneering intersections between architecture, engineering and natural science disciplines such as bioengineering and chemistry. The broad disciplinary breadth of these research processes inevitably requires mediating the diverse values, perspectives and research methodologies of disciplines that pursue innovation in different ways. However, to what extent is this new interdisciplinary convergence possibly transformative? Could it be that these processes, particularly in building technology innovation, may be influencing scientists and engineers to rethink how design problems are conceptualised and researched?