12.1 strategic planning; investments and collaboration
The Faculty of Architecture, the OTB Research Institute and the Berlage Institute are joining forces to benefit from mutual strengths and reputations.
Architecture, the OTB and the Berlage Institute are launching a joint Graduate School in 2010.
In 2011, the OTB will be integrated into the Faculty of Architecture.
The faculty will participate in the newly established 3TU.Federation Centre of Competence for the Built Environment: 3TU.BOUW.
The Faculty of Architecture establishes a reconfigured institute History and Theory.
The faculty will work with Elseviers' SCOPUS to develop an Architecture-rich journal index.
12.2 research topics planned for the near future and their perspectives
New research topics and funding opportunities will be absorbed by thematic programming in the Graduate School: cross-disciplinary topics such as Energy-Efficiency, Climate Change and Urban Europe.
The faculty, working with the Valorisation Centre, will identify individual staff members that are likely to be successful in obtaining research grants, to support and coach them in developing proposals for NWO, FP7-EEB, IEE and Urban Europe JPI.
12.3 flexibility and anticipation of expected changes
The Faculty of Architecture is moving from PhD employees towards PhD students, significantly reducing staff costs. The abolition of TU Delft’s output bonus system in 2010 is creating the opportunity to introduce effective new incentives.
Two-thirds of the direct funding will be allocated on the basis of staff size. One third will be allocated on the basis of performance indicators that are critical to the success of the Faculty’s research (journals, NWO funding, external funding) and to cross-cutting topics and opportunities.
Strategy
12
Ar ch ite ct ur e
ders: lara schrijver Phd & tom Averm
aete Phd
ers: tom Averm
aete Phd, Prof. leen van duin, Prof. dick van Gam eren
, Prof. Arie Graafland Phd, christoph Grafe Phd,
tton, d eborah hauptm
ann, Patrick healy, dirk van den heuvel, susanne Kom
ossa Phd, lara schrijver Phd, thorsten schuetze Phd,
lada
ture. It explores the status of architecture as a discipline that combines practical issues of design and the intellectual questions that underlie them.
This status is also reflected in the department’s educational programme. In addition, the programme aims to ensure a better and more systematic dissemination of the research results within the larger international scientific community.
1.2 societal concerns and issues
The research group addresses societal concerns through the encompassing and integrating qualities of the architectural project. Indeed, the architec-tural project, by its very definition, incorporates a wide range of aspects (such as the material, the social, the cultural, the economic and the ecological) into a concrete spatial proposal. This offers the possibility of opening up a particular perspective on societal questions in the realms of dwelling (changing housing needs caused by shifting demographics), public buildings (new educational or care models) and interiors (spaces for a multi-cultural society). As such, the research programme offers an alternative to the highly specialised and disparate perspectives on these societal concerns typically put forward in fields such as technology, material studies, cultural theory and real estate. The architectural project not only brings these perspectives together, but also puts forward design proposals such as new typologies, alternative material solutions and reconfigurations of spatial organisation. Perennial issues such as sustainability, and also explicitly nor-mative questions such as ‘how do we wish to live?’
are of central concern in the research activities.
The research programme ‘The Architectural Project and its Foundations’ (APF) was recently initiated, in 2008. The programme brings together a number of research strands from within the department. It provides an umbrella to facilitate better exchange between practical and theoretical research, while equally supporting the necessity for interesting and innovative, individual research.
The programme involves three primary compo-nents: the sub-programme ‘The Architectural 1.1 vision, mission and objectives
vision: This research programme focuses explicitly on architecture as métier, or ‘craft’ in the broad-est sense of the word; a field in which making and thinking are inextricably linked. The programme regards the ‘architectural project’ as the corner-stone of architectural practice and reflection.
It holds that the architectural project forms the junction where a complex combination of cultural, social, functional, economical and ecological factors is articulated as a concrete spatial proposal. This articulation requires a specific expertise that characterises the discipline of architecture.
Mission: The aim of the research programme is to reposition architecture firmly as a field of expertise with its own specific logic, rationale and instruments. While in recent years, research in architecture has often implied a quest for intangible forces, the focus on architecture as ‘craft’ and ‘project’ entails a return to the history, tools and paradigms of the discipline. This encompasses an in-depth investigation of how architectural projects can perform at the scale of the building, the city and the territory as well as a study of existing approaches and perspectives, instruments and disciplinary boundaries.
objectives: This research programme articulates a sustainable frame for future research in which pressing societal questions can co-exist in a coherent manner with timeless and fundamental questions pertaining to the discipline of