Skapande modeller. Design & Experiment runt bärkraftsfrågor och arkitektur

Licentiate thesis, 2007

Sustainable development has reached a level where existing knowledge based on research is well supported. However, existing knowledge does not seem to reach building processes and design practices and desired results have failed to appear. This work starts from a standpoint that perceiving sustainable architecture from a design perspective can alter the way we and implement sustainable building processes. The work addresses the question of what design knowledge is and how sustainable issues can be perceived from a design perspective. The purpose is to find design models that can bring together different sustainable practices, find methods to deal with empiric material and distinguish different knowledge phenomena that can explain the problems of unsatisfying results connected to sustainable building. Part of the purpose is to elucidate whether and how design knowledge can contribute to the understanding of sustainable practices, in order to understand how future practice can better accomplish the goals set up by sustainable development. This includes an understanding and explanation of the techniques used in the processes; how and by what motives designers and engineers act, and by what means design knowledge can enhance and contribute to the complex understanding of the formation and knowledge involved in these processes. The research methodology is based on the construction of a model that develops the classical design concepts of form and content. Form is used as a structural concept consisting of hypothetical models, structural organisation images and metaphoric elements, which when confronted with the empiric material give possibilities for further knowledge extraction. The four models that are constructed; constructive model, executive model, model of being, and narrative model focus on knowledge of human acting and explore how this knowledge appears in different examples, from concrete actions with techniques and materials to deeper approaches of human knowledge. Different concepts are explored within these models, such as deduction, induction, abduction, production and projection, in an effort to explain the complex reality of sustainable building practices. Fiction is used with metaphorically in an experimental attempt to reach subjective interpretations of objective reasoning. In creating the models liberation from traditional empirical research is established. The models explain design activity as living knowledge in continuous transformation. The studied examples show new attitudes in dealing with sustainable matters. The models show that design knowledge within sustainable building practices is under constant transformation and reconstruction. There is an obvious experimental activity, connected with a long time perspective to bring experiments to well functioning solutions. Awareness of possibilities connected with design can be used in research situations as creative tools where the inherent potential within design can help the production of active explorative research that can initiate further knowledge formation on complex issues, such as design for sustainable building.