Creativity, Calculation, & Curation: Research as a Framework for Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
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Date
2019
Authors
Laboy, Michelle
Fannon, David
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Challenges of building resilience and sustainability in the built environment demand collaboration across
multiple disciplines in both research and practice. Traditional academic settings offer fertile but often
challenging context in which research faculty can foster interdisciplinary collaboration informed by and
contributing to new and more integrated knowledge. This paper presents an example of such a crosscurricular
collaboration occurring through qualitative case study research, quantitative analysis,
comparison, and communication design culminating in the curation of knowledge in a major public
exhibit. Students studying architecture, engineering, art and design are collaborating across multiple
courses and semesters to develop the intellectual content, experiential narratives, and physical artifacts
that reflect the diverse opportunities and influence of education on the sustainable built environment.
Emerging from the faculty’s broader inquiry into the architecture of persistence, this project posits
durability of buildings as the ultimate measure of sustainability (and by extension, resilience) in
architecture . Using quantitative and qualitative methods, researchers developed a theoretical framework
for cultural, ecological and technological durability by analyzing interviews and projects. Six architecture
students—who first engaged in the topic in a comprehensive studio—became research assistants
documenting and analyzing specific precedents as material assemblies and cultural places. Using the
resulting documentation, students in an environmental engineering course conducted whole-building Life
Cycle Assessments. This body of quantitative and qualitative content feeds a representation course, in
which design students examine the role of exhibitions in architectural discourse and develop narratives
and objects that communicate material ecologies, assemblies and cultures to a disciplinary, and nondisciplinary
audience.
Description
12 pages