Research in architecture always holds a prime importance to complete any architectural project successfully. The three articles, ‘Is There Research in the Studio? by Kazys Varnelis, The rise of DAR: from crisis to possibilities and Space by Javier Arbona, Time and Architecture by Sigfried Giedion’ provide a distinct and versatile information about how the ‘architectural’ research got involved in it. (I will refer them as being first, second and third article in my response.) Also they helped to understand different meanings attached to it. As architecture being one of the branches of ART, the research involved in this field closely relates with ‘creativity’ – research in a creative manner. The Eameses’s documentary film exercise to conduct and convey the research is one of the examples from first article. Use images and films as a means of delivering one fundamental idea.

In my opinion every research in any field runs on one big idea. It is very noticeable from Smithsons’ statement which is one of my favorite, ‘a new seeing of the ordinary, an openness as to how prosaic ‘things’ could re-energise [their] inventive activity.’ Here the big idea is taking the world ‘as found’ but the challenge is to think in different ways about ordinary things, from the perspectives that never thought of before. Moreover in such cases, an idea leads to the specific research that innovates new ideologies and delivered through final product, I call this entire process as ‘design’ and so I understand ‘Research as Design’ as a whole. However, I also agree that the politics, finance, builder lobby etc. involved in the field try to degrade the initial critical analysis (research) and jump on design as research. The practices of Rem Koolhaas’s AMO, Knowledge Platform by UNStudio and Morphopedia by Morphosis are some of the other milestones in influencing the creative research involved in architecture studios with Bannister’s Journal of Architectural Education.

I like the way first article relates and compares between Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ and Rem Koolhaas’s ‘Delirious New York’ from all the examples provided in the article. The Latter takes the help of architecture theory and history to conduct the research and delivers the innovative radical thinking evolved from the research and Koolhaas’s personal ideas. These two examples assist in realizing in what ways research should developed in architecture studios.

The second and third article provides delves further into understanding of term ‘Design as Research’ to identify the broader penetration of the research imagination in architecture. Second article takes help of Deconstructivism to convey the idea of process is important rather than finished product. After reading all the three articles I am very well persuaded with the statement that design is not synonymous with research. Design cannot be base its conclusion on design itself and architecture should open to both design and research, as opposed to design as research. Again, Rem Koolhaas’s ‘Delirious New York’ is good example to understand this concept.