Interdisciplinary Approaches to Architectural Research ─ Studying the Seattle Central Library

It is increasingly apparent, when discussing architecture student’s dissertations, that a lot of research into architecture starts, not with a question, but with a building (or site, place, abstract building ‘type’, or work of a particular architect or practice). This innate curiosity about the world and drive to understand it, usually becomes engaged by real-world, architectural phenomena and this volume argues that this is a commendable, basic research instinct. But what appropriate research tools are available to the researcher to carry out this investigation? Starting in the same way, by taking a particular real-world building as research-stimulus - the Seattle Public Library designed by OMA architects - this volume then illustrates a range of different methods available to researchers of the built environment through their application to this same building. By seeing the range of different methods applied to one building, a prospective researcher is not only able to see how different tools can highlight different aspects of a building, and therefore inform their own choice of approach, but also how different methods can complement each other, or be combined. For the most part, it focuses on the design process, the building or the building user and the relationship between the user and the building. Many of these methods are primarily derived from other disciplines and yet this very aspect of interdisciplinary research is rarely addressed or discussed. This book is quite different, brings together contributions from internationally renowned academics from a range of different fields: architecture, ethnography, architectural criticism, phenomenology, sociology, environmental psychology, and cognitive to show how methods from other academic fields can be applied to architectural research.

Ruth Conroy Dalton is Professor of Building Usability and Visualisation at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. She is an architect and her research interests are on the relationship between the spatial layout of buildings and environments and how people understand and interact in those spaces.

Christoph Holscher is Professor of Cognitive Science at ETH Zurich. He is a psychologist by training and the focus of his work is at the intersection of spatial cognition and architectural design.