Repercusiones del nuevo concepto estratégico en las relaciones con Rusia: de la

In the previous section I argued that a creative and design-directed research strategy is needed to produce landscape architecture research (as distinct from landscape research) that can engage and inform non-design disciplines. However this begs the question: how might creativity be a method of research? Or put another way: what is design-directed, rather than design- focused research?

Alan Berger and his collaborators, writing about the peer-reviewed landscape design studio, point out that “ ‘research by design’ is an emerging field with many questions to ask and traditions to establish”.28 _{However landscape}

architecture’s nascent condition in the academy, as it shifts from its professional pedagogical purpose to one also with academic substance, means peer reviewed academic and post-graduate research, regardless of method, is relatively recent.29 _{It appears that variety rather than clarity of}

methodological approach prevails. While such fluidity is generally unacknowledged it nonetheless means any substantial research in landscape architecture is likely to involve an implicit inquiry of method and not just the application of an already accepted approach. Hence a dissertation such as this, cannot aspire to assert a particular methodological approach without, in the course of the research, that approach being also the subject of scholarly inquiry. This echoes the situation for many design disciplines as they have sought to move from solely practising practice into exploring valid, and also distinctive, modes of academic inquiry. The result is considerable ongoing

28 Berger, Corkery and Moore, 2003, Researching the Studio, p2.

29 The first issue of Landscape Research was 1975, Landscape Journal was 1982, Landsape Review was 1995, and the Journal of Landscape Architecture was 2006.

academic debate into the relationship between practice and research as definitions of each iteratively reverberate off the other down through various academic channels.

There is a growing academic keenness to debate and investigate this situation. This is evidenced by ongoing activity such as: vibrant chat lists like

PhD-Design whose central thread is the relationship between research,

theory and practice; the growing number of papers in journals like Design Issues, Design Research, Design Philosophy Papers, Architectural Design Research and the Journal of Architectural Education that attempt to shape theoretical models for such work; and an expanding number of international inter-disciplinary conferences covering themes including ‘The unthinkable doctorate’30_{, ‘In the making’}31 _{‘Research into practise’}32 _{and ‘Practice as}

Research in Performance’33_.

A similar approach is also adopted to the processes and settings for landscape design. For example, over a number of journal issues, a series of papers presented examples of the design studio as an opportunity “to uncover and develop new areas of knowledge to inform the education and practice of design”.34 _{The Journal of Landscape Architecture and Landscape}

Review both include special categories of peer reviewed design-led

research.35 _{Also the current emphasis of linking institutional funding to}

measures of research performance has given the role of research further impetus, as academics have sought to secure resources by framing what might have been previously considered practice as research.36

Nonetheless, while such approaches occur, they are not the prevailing position. Paul Carter states that current thinking in “creative research … has been intellectually a rather under-resourced debate”.37 _{Rather than directing}

research using design, the intent of most studies, according to Carter, is to

30 Belderbos and Verbeke, 2007, The Unthinkable Doctorate Conference Proceedings. 31 see http://www.nordes.org : accessed 19th March 2008

32 see http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/res2prac/ : accessed 19th March 2008 33 see http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip : accessed 19th March 2008

34 Berger, Corkery and Moore, 2003, Researching the Studio, p1.

35 See the ‘Refereed Studio’ themed issues of Landscape Review – Vol 5(2) and Vol 8(1) – and also Journal of Architectural Education Vol 54(4) and Vol 61(1).

36 See, for example, in a New Zealand context: McCarthy, Walliss and Victoria University of Wellington. Faculty of Architecture and Design., 2003, Proceedings of the National Design Research Symposium. And in a German context: Hohne, 1998, Design Teaching and Design Research: Disciplines in their own right? In Diskurs: Journal of Design and Design Theory.

‘extend’ and ‘intensify’ the already known. Hence the “criteria of success are simplification, resolution, closure. In the process of conducting research, new problems ‘emerge’; but they are treated the same way”.38 _{It is this situation}

that leads Carter to provocatively declare that for many in our academic institutions “it is self-evident that a research question without a simple answer is not a proper subject for research”.39

Certainly various papers relating to the effective completion of post-graduate study emphasise a sound organisational strategy. One justifiably points out “it’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize”, though its tone is to ensure an inquiry that avoids the problematic.40 _{Another describes how ideally such research should}

be “manageable, producing interesting results and a thesis in the shortest possible time”,41 _{and that it should be in “an area near the main streams of a}

discipline”.42 _{Deviation from these guidelines, if a successful and timely}

graduation is desired, is strongly advised against.

Does such advice, along with the uncertainty surrounding design’s relationship with research methods mean I would be well advised to steer my own academic course elsewhere? Would it be sufficient to bring wilderness back into the landscape architecture consciousness just as, for example, Spirn has brought to the discipline a renewed awareness of linguistics while Potteiger and Purinton have engaged the discipline with a consideration of narrative?43 _{However might sidestepping the problematic relationship}

between designing and research intellectually alienate myself from the designerly impetus that brought me to this discipline and topic, my own design-based expertise, and also my aspirations to further pursue designerly academic research at the completion of this study. Yet, to carry on down this path requires of myself, and also the readers examining this research, preparedness for a conclusion that embodies what Sarah Whatmore calls “the joy of not knowing”.44 _{For given the level of discussion and the shifting of}

38 Ibid, p13. 39 Ibid, p13.

40 Mullins and Kiley, 2002, 'It's a PhD, not a Nobel Prize': how experienced examiners assess research theses. 41 Perry, 2002, A structured approach to presenting theses: notes for students and their supervisors, p2. This is a

revised version of Perry, 1998, A structured approach to presenting theses: notes for students and their supervisors. In the paper Perry also proposes a research programme and chapter structure that targets completion in 27 months. 42 Ibid, p1.

43 See Spirn, 1998, The language of landscape. Potteiger and Purington, 1998, Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories.

44 Whatmore, 2003, Generating Materials, p98. Or what John Law lists as outcomes that might be “slippery, indistinct, elusive, complex, diffuse, messy, textured, vague, unspecific, confused, disordered, emotional, painful, pleasurable,

positions it would be overly ambitious to suggest that any attempt to apply a design-directed research methodology could be definitive. Indeed a more likely outcome might be the suggestion of possible and perhaps viable approaches and avenues for further inquiry alongside, what in terms of this study appear as dead ends.45

Confusing as it may seem, this is nonetheless what design-directed research

currently is. It is the subject of much debate which shows no sign yet of coalescing. In an inquiry of ‘Design as Research’, in which the Journal of Architectural Education launched a new category of contribution, Lily Chi poses five interrelated questions for designerly research. These are: “[First] in what ways can design work’s very specificity and finitude offer a medium of investigation for questions of broad concern? [Second] how do the creative and discursive interact? [Third] how does individual imagination figure in the deliberation of sociocultural matters? [Fourth] what role does the created artefact play in the conjectural process? [Fifth] how, in short, can design as

design be practised – and read – as a pursuit of knowledge,

understanding?”46

In the previous chapter I sought, much as Chi’s first question directs, to articulate a context of broad interest that may benefit from an inquiry founded in landscape architecture – namely wilderness and the conservation estate. This chapter, so far, has attempted to prepare the ground for a discussion of Chi’s second and third questions. It is the development of a framework for research that could allow these issues to be considered that the remainder of this chapter pursues. A crucial point is that the final two questions, along with the first, will form the substance of this dissertation –

hopeful, horrific, lost, redeemed, visionary, angelic, demonic, mundane, intuitive, sliding and unpredictable”. Law, 2004, After method : mess in social science research, p19. Elsewhere Law states “the real chance to make a difference lies… in the irreducible. In the oxymoronic. In the topologically discontinous. In that which is heterogenous. It lies in a modest willingness to live, to know, and to practice in the complexities of tension”. Law, 1999, After ANT: complexity, naming and topology, p12. Such an outcome, despite an air of ineffability (and even because of it), in all likelihood offers greater synthetic and hence designerly possibility for the landscape architect. For an a consideration of Rittel’s framing such contexts as Wicked Problems see: Buchanan, 1992, Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.

45 Dorst notes considerable volatility in current design research. He considers “there is a build-up of anomalies; phenomena that cannot be explained within the conventional wisdom”. Noting Kuhn he considers such flux occurs prior to a paradigmatic shift. See Dorst, 2008, Design research: a revolution-waiting-to-happen, p4.

46 Chi, 2001, Introduction: Design as Research, p250. A more recent review of this issue by the Journal of Architectural Education reiterates the tension between design scholarship and scholarly design: See, for example, Furjan, 2007, Design/Research. ; Powers, 2007, Toward a Discipline-Dependent Scholarship. ; Wortham, 2007, The Way We Think about the Way We Think.

and in a manner, as Chi concludes, such that “these questions invite not definitive answers, but reflection”.47