Ideas matter

Are current definitions of ‘research’ stifling ideas that might be relevant to our discipline? This paper explores how a drive toward empirical research - while linking architecture to issues, facts, and data important to architecture's relevance - also drives architecture away from speculative ideas necessary to imagining a better future. This observation is briefly examined in the four spheres of design, history/theory, teaching, and advocacy. In design, the move in research from program to production to mapping may be seen as a form of avoiding the very thing most needing ideas/research – how to change the way we conceive of design work. In history/theory, the drive to archival specificity may be seen as fear of speculation. In teaching, empirical models emphasising sustainability that are evidence of ‘real research’ may leave behind theory altogether. And in advocating for a more empowered profession, the requirement for financial data and economic validation as proof for necessitating change may miss the larger problem of our current self-imposed identity as architects. Ideas that are not justified by current norms of research are still necessary.