Altering Research
“Altering Research: Making Room for Difference in Architectural Research.” In Speaking of Buildings, edited by N. Stead, J. Gosseye and D. Van Plaat. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2019.
As methods for architectural research, interviews and participant-observation can be destabilizing. Direct contact with people pulls the researcher away from the tangible (albeit relative) certainty of drawings, construction documents, and built form. While the “voices” of documents and constructions have a perceived aura of stability and truthfulness, the voices of human beings, detached from established frames of knowledge, can be viewed as emotional, subjective, complex, and sometimes treacherous.[i] Riddled with numerous and often conflicting tones and affects, voices participate in true polyphony that is discordant and multiple. This proposition poses a problem for oral history in general and for architectural research in particular. Even the authority afforded to the architect’s interview has to be questioned and understood as yet another voice in the continuing interpretation and reception of the work of architecture.[ii] Encounters may be translated and interpreted, or folded into narratives controlled by the researcher, but working with other voices in the construction of historical narratives seriously questions authorship (who gets to speak and how) in the process of making sense of architecture…
[i] Steven Nachman, “Lies my Informants Told Me,” Journal of Anthropological Research 40, no. 4 (1984): 536–55.
[ii] Robert Proctor, “The Architect's Intention: Interpreting Post-War Modernism through the Architect Interview,” Journal of Design History 19, no. 4 (2006): 295–307.
