Week 5 :

Research Methodology and

Methods
1.Case Study Methodology (Design methods)
2.Historical interpretive methodology
Reading: Groat & Wang Chapters 6 & 12

How can culture be translated into

architecture?

Topic

Your interest
Programme/School
interests

Vertical farming influences the way

we live
Artists make better architects

Time/Resources/Do-ability
Conduct a
background study
using literature on
the topic

Research Question
Subject/object of study/focus area

Focused/WOW
Research Question
What you dont know about your
topic

1. Do I know the field and the

literature well?
2. What are the important
research questions in my
field?
3. What are the areas need
further exploration?
4. Could my research fill a gap?
Lead to greater
understanding?
5. Has a great deal of research
already been conducted in
this topic area?
6. Has this study been done
before? If so, is there room for
improvement?

From Question

History Research
Qualitative
Research
Experimental
Research
Correlational
research
Simulation research
Logical
Argumentation
research
Case Study and
Multi-methods
approaches to
research

Methodology
Strategy of study

To Methods
Techniques of collecting and
analysing data

1. Identify and describe the

methodology suitable for
your knowledge construction.
Justify.

2. Breakdown your main

Question to small
questions/objectives, i.e. what
you need to find out in order
to achieve the RQ
3. For each objective list down
the methods
1.
2.
3.
4.

Data required
Source of data
Data collection technique
Data analysis

SYSTEM OF INQUIRY PHILOSOPHICAL STANCE

METHODOLOGY-CHOICES FOR STRUCTURING

RESEARCH
STRATEGIES-(RESEARCH DESIGN/METHODS)
OVERALL RESEARCH PLAN OR STRUCTURE OF THE
RESEARCH STUDY
`
METHODS/
TECHNIQUES DATA
COLLECTION AND
ANALYSIS

where

place took me..

veronica ng

Architectural meaning resides

in human experience. It is
evoked in the acts of occupying
and inhabiting
space and place

place as:
A social-cultural construct
A reiterative process of cultural
practices
Lived experience/spirit of place
Place versus space
Otherness of place

Design Studio:
What sort of
architecture do we
create if emphasis is
focused on place?

5th year design thesis:

How can we create places whilst
maintaining an
abstract/modernist way of
design?
DWELLING VERSUS MACHINE

where place took me.

PhD:
If place is such a
problematic term, why
is it so?

PhD: What is place?

three + - dwellings in..

system versus meaning: a dichotomy
5th year design thesis:
How can we create places whilst
maintaining an
abstract/modernist way of
design?

SYSTEM OF INQUIRY PHILOSOPHICAL STANCE

METHODOLOGY- QUALITATIVE/CASE STUDIES

AND MIXED METHODS RESEARCH DESIGN

METHODS/
TECHNIQUES DATA
COLLECTION AND
ANALYSIS

Research Problem:

Research Question:

Significance:

Crisis of modern
science (PerezGomez)

(INITIAL) How can we create places

whilst maintaining an
abstract/modernist way of design?

Meaning to the
user; methods for
designer

Modernist spacemaking strategies are

often cited as
meaningless/nonplace

(REFINED) How meaning of place

could be translated into the
meaning of a dwelling by using a
technical system as a design tool?

Phenomenology of
Place (Heidegger,
Norberg-Schulz)
Through the design of 3 dwellings for
a couple in 3 different locales

Research methods:
Literature on:
Meaning of place Joseph
Rykwert, Norberg-Schulz

Observations
on site

analyse

Comments of
residents/user

Three
dwellings

resolve

Meaning of Place
is conceptualised

Diagramming
exploration
Proportions
exploration

explore

Literature on:
Translating meaning
into architecture
(Norberg-Schulz,
John Hejduk)

explore

Case study on
design methods
of spacemaking
(modernist)
Subtractive-additive
space (Loius Kahn);
proportions
(Corbusier; Teragni)

SUBTRACTION
OF
SOLIDS/VOIDS

ADDITION OF
SOLIDS

SPACE WITIN
SPACE/VOIDS
WITHIN VOIDS

re-thinking place
architecture and the histories of place

PhD:
If place is such a
problematic term, why
is it so?

Current definition on place:

Place as social and cultural constructs
Place as lived experience
Place as power/ideology
Otherness of place

Why is place a problematic term?

How was place conceptualized?

Historical research on the ideas of place

Collect historical artefacts to construct ideas of place at particular points in
history
To inform current issues relating to the concept of place

History
his + story
History is a story of historical accounts
History is imaginary-comprehensive
Values of historical research:
It throws light on present and future trends.
It enables understanding of and solutions to
contemporary problems to be sought in the past.
It can illuminate the effects of key interactions within
a culture or sub-culture.
It allows for the revaluation of data in relation to
selected hypotheses, theories and generalizations
that are presently held about the past and the
present.

History
his + story
History is a story of historical accounts
History is imaginary-comprehensive

data gathering

evaluation

narration

Steps in historical research

1. Conceptualization of an idea, topic, or
research question
2. Locate evidence and do background
literature review
3. Evaluate evidence
4. Organize evidence
5. Synthesize evidence and develop general
explanatory model
6. Develop a narrative exposition of the findings

Data Sources

Historical Sources encompass

every kind of evidence which
human beings have left of their
past activities the written word
and the spoken word, the shape of
the landscape and the material
artefact, the fine arts as well as
photography and film.

(John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 1991, 30)

Primary Sources:
first-hand or eyewitness
observations of phenomenon,
manuscripts, newspaper records,
documents, correspondences,
photographs, artifacts, building, art,
etc.
Secondary Sources:
second-hand observation, i.e. the
author collected the data from
eyewitnesses.
Running Records
Statistics, govt data
Recollections

Hierarchy of Sources
Primary Sources These are
original sources produced during
the period of interest. They are
further divided into published
and unpublished primary
sources.
Secondary sources These are
what historians have written about
the past (the historians may not
be from out own time, e.g. they
could be much closer to the past
they write about).

Interpretations of history
The causal explanations of
history: This strategy
interprets history by
isolating causal links and
rendering behaviour of
social phenomena as
predictable.

History as the movement

of absolute spirit, derived
from the thought of the
philosopher G.W.F. Hegel:
The epistemological
assumption of this
strategy holds that history
is the on-going evolution
of a communal
consciousness or mind
(Geist, translated as
spirit). Its basic tenet was
that a form of universal
reason existed behind the
surface forms of human
knowledge. Thus the
progress of reason could
be discerned working its
way through history as an
immaterial but everpresent Geist or spirit.

Structuralism: This was

derived from the thought
of Claude Levi-Strauss
who referred to history as
causal history, and
similarity in style is
necessarily the result of
physical contact. This
strategy assumed that
meaning arises from a
structural system which is
self-contained, selfregulating and selftransformative.

Post-structuralism: Poststructuralism is marked by

a rejection of totalizing
concepts which put all
phenomena under one
explanatory concept. It
assumed 'reality' as being
much more fragmented,
diverse, thus it
emphasised specific
histories rather than total
history. The historic era
becomes the object-ascomplex-reality, and an
understanding of that
reality consists of parsing
the discourses that define
it. The post-structuralist
strategy of historical
explanation does not
explain a set of given
conditions as obliged to
previous conditions.
Knowledge is governed by
the rules of discourse for
that area, and related to
other texts.

SYSTEM OF INQUIRY

METHODOLOGYHISTORICAL INTERPRETIVE - POST-STRUCTURALIST

METHODS/
TECHNIQUES
SOURCES: TEXTS,
VISUALS, FILMS,
ARCHITECTURE
ANALYSIS: ANALYSIS
AND NARRATIVE

History of ideas
History as discontiuous
Collect historical artefacts to construct ideas of place at particular points in
history
To inform current issues relating to the concept of place

place as a social construct:

classification of places

An exemplar of classification of building

type. Maison Ditalie, Par Palladio, in Receuil

The North Parade, Bath , John Wood

Bourse. Design by C.N. Ledoux

Pattern book

place as an idealised landscape:

history + constructed landscapes

Landscape with St Matthew. By

Nicholas Poussin

Bird-eye view of Longleat. Copper engraving

by Jan Kip after a drawing by Leonard Knyff

Front-piece to
Laugiers Essai sur
l'architecture

Plan and views of Chiswick House

and gardens. Engraving by Jean
Rocque

place as a moral construct: good or

bad?

place as perceptions: individual

perceptions of place

Strength
1. The historical method is unobtrusive
2. The historical method is well suited for trend
analysis.
3. There is no possibility of researcher-subject
interaction.

Weaknesses
1. Bias in interpreting historical sources.
2. Interpreting sources is very time consuming.
3. Sources of historical materials may be problematic
4. Lack of control over external variables

The Challenge of Historical Sources

Some historical research is ethnographic in nature,
such as oral history, which commonly involves
talking to participants about their memories of the
past.
But where social research involves studying the past
that is beyond living memory, it is different from
ethnography in that there is no direct access to the
phenomena of interest.
An ethnographer writes his/her field notes after direct
observation of social interaction. This means they
are able to continually mould their data and to
select what is relevant during the
observation/interaction itself.
It is very different with historical documents or
sources you cannot interact with sources in the
same way as living people.

 Therefore historical research can be very

labour-intensive compared to other
methods of social research.
Contrary to the view that historical
research is easy because it does
not involve interacting with people,
historical research is extremely
challenging, involving long hours
of sometimes painstaking work in
the isolation of the archive.
Much of this work will produce nothing that will ever make it into
the final research writing.
So historical research requires better-than-average reserves
of patience, dedication and perseverance.