Developing Making Scholarship. From Making Disciplines to Field-specific Research in Creative Practices

Paper in proceeding, 2013

This paper describes a project which will result in a book with the intentions to present and discuss certain developments in establishing field-specific scholarship within architecture, design and the arts. The idea is that the book will address three periods which differed in their degree of maturing towards a more established and “self-confident” scholarly culture in several schools of architecture in Belgium, Sweden and Norway, where the authors have had the opportunity to teach at the level of doctoral studies. The intention of the book is that each period studied will be illustrated by cases of “excellent research practice” which we regard to have played the role of turning points in the development of the recent decades. These cases will not be discussed in this paper, since its aim is to present the overall set-up of the project and our stance in relation to its different aspects. The book project builds on the authors’ own writings from the period 2001–2012 and will be supplied by commentaries on the role we have played in developing a certain model of understanding what field-specific research in creative practices could be.