Mapping, Reflecting and Developing PhD-by-design programs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mapping, Reflecting and Developing PhD-by-design programs

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Research and innovation; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

Context:
As part of the Bologna process and the European Union’s “Higher Education Modernization Agenda” schools of architecture and urban design are facing the challenge of developing educational programs on all three levels of higher education (BA, MA, PhD). While Bachelor- and Master-Degree-Programs have successfully been established in the past decades, the implementation and promotion of PhD-programs has been a thorny issue for most schools of architecture and urban design.

Objectives:
The project’s goal consisted in mapping these various approaches in order to relate, position and develop further the various streams of conducting design-based PhDs. The goal was neither to identify best practices nor to rank or evaluate the various ways of doing research in Architecture and Urban Design. Rather, the goal was to map the rich and growing landscape of approaches at European universities and to contribute to a reflexive, creative and collaborative positioning and implementation of new and existing PhD-programs.

Number and profile of participants:
The project team consisted of four participating institutions of higher education. Two of these, the KU Leuven (BE) and Chalmers University (SE) had established PhD-by-design programs in the past decade and belong to the forefront of those schools that have adapted a research-by-design methodologies. The two other schools, University of Liechtenstein (LI) and the Bergen School of Architecture (NO) aim at developing PhD-by-design curricula in the future. All four project partners are committed to further develop their understanding of how PhDs by Design can be postioned with regard to ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches.

Description of activities:
The project was organized in line with the collaborative production of three intellectual outputs. These are prepared and coordinated in four transnational project meetings. The organization of a multiplier event at the end of the project supported the quick and direct dissemination of the project’s outcomes to an international audience. Furhtermore, the outputs have been condensed into four articles by inter-school teams of authors. The articles have been submitted to a peer-review process with the open-access online journal AJAR. The initally planned mobilities of both staff members and students (which had the goal to foster an exchange on an experiental level and to promote future collaboration on this topic) had to be canceld due to the COVID pandamic.

Methodology:
The project was based on the practices of mapping, reflecting and developing concepts, methods and curricula of PhD-by-design programs. For doing so the project partners draw on established methods from the social sciences, including systematic literature search, interviews with peers, analysis of findings, reflection of research results and publication in form of both textual output and grafic representations. By way of mapping the research results in graphical representations the project partners aimed to adopt design-based methods to their own search and to make the research results more compatible with the perception culture in architecture and urban design.

Results and impact:
As almost all European schools of architecture have to develop their PhD-programs, there is a strong need for gaining an overview of concepts, methods and existing curricular. The project’s output is directed at and aims to support European schools of architecture and urban design in developing their PhD-curricular. It provides an overview of conceptual insights, methodological tools and new perspectives on PhD curricula that can be assembled and adapted to the resources, cultural specificities and institutional histories of the various schools of architecture in Europe.

Longer term benefits:
The project makes space for the diversity of approaches that the European Union stands for. The project outcomes support all schools that are interested in promoting PhD by Design, in resonance with their specific resources, cultures and histories. Furthermore, the project hopes to inspire future research into what it could mean to conduct research-by-design inside and outside of potential PhD-programs and aims to provide useful tools for reflexivity and creativity to its audience. With the promotion of design-based research and the fostering of diversity and multiplicity within this approach, European universities can strongly contribute to turning Europe into a hotbed of innovation and creativity. This project contributesin this strategy as it promotes a practice that draws on the cultural historical richness in both design and research. Such a movement towards design-based research will create resonance on an international level, inspiring others to draw on and learn from these newly emerging competences.

Project Website

https://www.uni.li/de/thema/architektur/architekturvermittlung-1/research-by-design

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 183381 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT LIECHTENSTEIN & Country: LI

Project Partners

• CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLA AB
• Bergen Arkitekthøgskole
• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN