Holistic Site Research Cycle

As outlined in my post ‘ARP 02: Reflections on Inclusive Practices Intervention and Ethical Action Plan’, I’m looking at the impact of collective site research within a series of activities, with a collective drawing workshop as the series’ culmination. In this post, I am briefly introducing two groundwork laying activities:

1. Collective site visit
2. Hands on design assignment ‘Act Of Repair’

Collective Site Visit

The site visit on Tuesday, October 7th was the first time I met the student cohort. The site—the place that we had chosen for the students to design their architecture projects for—is located in the Lee Valley in Enfield in North London. The students will work on their design projects for the entire year, and will grow to know the site via a range of methods. In the first instance, it was important that they simply orientate themselves, start to understand the site’s complexities, and discuss the varied perspectives available to them through their diverse studio group. We have been using the method of collective site visits for years, but this time, we also introduced the ethnographic research method of taking field notes (Tjora, 2006). We hoped that having a way to first put down personal considerations of the site will help students avoid wanting to please the other or others in the group at the collective drawing WS (Arnold, Norton, 2021).

‘Act of Repair’

We also introduced a week-long design task for students to complete in pairs or trios. We called it ‘Act of Repair’, borrowing the concept of the ‘Repair Society’ from the editors of the Arch+ magazine issue ‘The Great Repair’ (ARCH+, 2023). The aim was to steer students away from the individualistically oriented and desktop-based site research methods that are conventional in architecture practice, and to ask them to reflect on the site through physical matter—to research with things (Woodward, 2022).

Each students was asked to pick up some matter—organic, inorganic—from the site. We then arranged a ‘marketplace’ for everyone to pair up their matter with someone else’s.

Only then, we introduced the brief—to combine and “repair” their found matter into something new. In the following week back in the studio, we arranged a small exhibition where all student pairs discussed their objects and observations about the site these helped them to make.

Conclusion

The collective site visit is a tried and tested method for creating some initial camaraderie in the group. The long walk is fundamental for it. Introducing an autoethnographic note-taking activity to it worked well, as everyone had to actively engage with their initial opinions and reflections. 

The ‘Act of Repair’ task proved to be a good way to excite the students by asking them to make something that can be interpreted in many ways. Having these finished objects out on tables worked well for creating a wow-factor, which in turn helped everyone engage with everyone else’s verbal reflections too. The artefacts also became the first data I collected, and that I informally started to interpret together with the students.

Bibliography:

[1] Arnold, L. & Norton, L., 2021. Problematising pedagogical action research in formal teaching courses and academic development: a collaborative autoethnography. Educational Action Research, 29(2), pp. 328-345. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2020.1746373

[2]Tjora, A.H. (2006). Writing Small Discoveries: An Exploration of Fresh Observers’ Observations. London: Sage Publications. 

[3] ARCH+ (eds.) (2023). The Great Repair: A Catalog of Practices. Bilingual (German/English) edition. Stuttgart/Berlin: Spector Books.[4] Woodward, S. (2020). Material Methods: Researching and Thinking with Things. London: Sage Publications.