Murray Fraser, “A ‘Two-Fold Movement’: Design Research as Dialectical Critical Practice”

1. Sharif states that even though she knows her design proposals regarding Palestine/Israel doesn’t solve anything between them, it can be a “creative tool of resistance when backed up with a clear strategy”. Is it possible that architecture can be more than that, that one day it could help solve conflicts as big as this one?
2. “Architecture is, first and foremost, a process of creating knowledge. Because of this, the making of architecture is a major coalescing activity in society, bring together many flows into a single complex stream.” Is this the goal of what Lebbeus Woods hopes architecture could do, bring peace and fix damaging cities?
3. The definition of two-fold movement Saarinen describes is having town-design from the future toward the present and town-design from the present toward the future. Is this a concept that would still work today as Saarinen’s book was written 70 years ago? Have we gotten to a place in regards to technology and methods that we would want to work backwards?

Jane Rendell- “A Way with Words: Feminist Writings Architectural Design Research”

1. The concept of a diagonal axis is mentioned when talking about interdisciplinary and calling the construction of one a difficult business. However, what is a “diagonal axis”? Is it interacting with colleagues and sharing information or is it something else?
2. The article states that muf has had a huge influence on the development of feminist architectural design even though muf isn’t referred to as being feminist. If this is so, then why relate the two together? How could it be considered feminist architectural design if they claim not to be?
3. “One particularly important aspect of feminist critical spatial practice has been its desire to relate theory to architectural design, to make connections between built practice and written text.” Is this really anything new? Haven’t people done this in the past and still use it in non-feminist critical practices?