this is a good question...

I think many of the hard problems are around issues of sustainability - I think we're finally getting beyond greenwashing and seriously looking at the building as part of a greater system.

So what did they come up with for social science?

18x32, I'd be interested to know if you can think of any examples of hard problem #1. I'm trying to assemble a list of such projects.

The social scientist side of me says that the hardest problem for most architects is finding work.

Then I'd go with problems of shell. Not necessarily because it is harder than other problems, but it is the one that seems to get screwed up the most frequently.

Modernism and history is still the "biggest"problem.

Innovation and originality has yet to be articulated as a serious problem.

Sustainability in all of its possible incarnations is the broadest problem, and one that cuts across the sub-disciplines of architecture. Some of these problems are more apparent than others.

The hardest problem is when the Architect is more interested in the job than the Client.

the hardest problem is admitting that the best architectural solution often means not building.

what to do with obsolete buildings, neighborhoods, cities, etc.

What about the idea of Architecture needing to respond to issues of both space AND time...not just space alone?

Understanding that design alone cannot solve larger social and economic problems.

This is a vast question, but I can start with monopoly and hunger.

Carl
Do you have some link to that symposium?

Architects.

Accepting architecture's contingency, finite nature the importance of other agents in design?

Figuring out what is actually sustainable and socially appropriate for the context of each design.

I picture architecture and social challenges as conjoined twins.

the hardest problem in architecture is seeing eye-to-eye with the plan checker

This is a very good question. I like both of 18x32's problems.

Carl, you asked for hard problems in architectural research, for which I think 18x32's question how can we find a social problem whose solution is actually architectural? is excellent. I love socially involved work, but feel the majority of the time the problem leads back to a policy solution, not a material one.

Personally, though, I think the hardest challenge of practice is trying to prove one's worth in a generally design-ignorant community - without offending that community by calling them "ignorant".

"policy solution, not a material one."

Problems in architecture? I just call a general contractor!




But, in all honesty?

Research generally requires application. Application requires processes and testing. Testing requires materials, energy and investment. I think one can thoroughly exhaust arguments of time, money and energy.

I think application of materials has a long way to go. Not just creating new ones or finding new or duplicate uses for materials... But finding how and where they come from.

I know an issue with Florida for instance is there supposedly isn't a steel fabricator or manufacturer (that has a large industrial output) for hundreds of miles. So, there really isn't many steel structures here. Especially the kind of steel structures that are very cost competitive to other forms of similar structure (like parking garages).

So, in terms of experimentation and research within the context of my locality... well those ideas better utilize a lot of concrete and cheap pine wood.

thanks for your input, everyone. I meant to link to the symposium here. A slightly longer framing of my question here.

Reflecting, it seems to me there are a few important areas:

- sustainability, reuse etc. in the energy-and-material intensive practice of architecture

- the complicity of architecture in repression

- the question of whether architecture is in fact an enterprise distinct from other fields of design

- how can the wildly varied epistemologies of architectural theory and research be reconciled?

I really like 18x32's first question: even finding problems is a problem.

An argument against my whole line of questioning here might be that architecture is always and inherently contingent on a particular problem that isn't posed by the architect at all. (although we're talking about architectural research here)

Many of these "problems" only become apparent when you compare the reality of the architectural profession to an idealized idea of what architecture should be.

Most of these things aren't problems at all, they are just the inherent challenges of an evolving profession.

i don't necessarily mean 'problems' in the sense of faults that need to be fixed in the profession. i am thinking specifically of what hard problems are there that need to be addressed by architectural researchers. not all architectural practitioners are necessarily architectural researchers, I would argue.

i would say no more than a handful of architectural researchers are researchers, even.

we are a navel-gazing lot and architectural theory and advanced research often is about esoteric rubbish (y) exploration of themes that are not really important. sometimes its feels like our brightest minds spend their rime considering the equivalent of advanced investigation of what happens when a door is hinged to open both ways. The results are interesting but not really relevant in the sense that nothing is going to be solved by the outcome of the work....

this is not fair of me to say really, but i have sat in on far too many phd defences by architects to feel confident we as a group are capable of asking difficult questions at all. it is sometimes worrying.


environmental issues maybe are a starting point. my own work for phd was in urban planning and related to the effect of compact city policies here in japan. on the scale of urbanism i think we maybe can ask and answer some questions that really are about the built world alone, but in the end it all shifts into sociology and politics - policy really - where architecture is more about being the tool than the central part of the problem/solution...

maybe i am reading things wrong...mockbee could have better answer perhaps?

i have a hard on for architecture

jump, i feel a bit the same way. I see a lot of research that seems misguided (a value judgement on my part, of course); and a lot of 'research' that doesn't seem to have any kind of research question. there is a lot of 'research-styled' architectural work out there, though; just like there is a lot of 'green-styled' architectural work. (David Gissen's 'architecture's geographic turn' in Log a couple of years ago was quite good on this point)

but hypothetically, if there were researchers such as myself who would quite like to know that their research mattered, and was bettering the field, what could they work on?

Maybe my opinion is way too naive and based exclusively on personal observations, not even a research, but I believe that Architecture itself cannot resolve social issues, while it certainly causes it. I also believe that "obsolete" architecture can always be re-adjusted not to be so by studying and architecturally manipulating how it actually it used by end users, not hypothetical occupants.

After stating that, I will also add, risking to be laughed at, that there is no "Hard Problems" in Architecture, as all of the problems of built and natural environment could only be local, therefore solutions must also raise from local culture /resources /etc.

The way I see the "big problem" is that not many practices that build on large scale concern themselves with environmental psychology aspects of design and that architecture is still looking for a single solution of a "Hard Problem" as it has ever existed, as if Modernism have not proved that one solution for all leads to a decay.

Nice thread Carl,

Hypothetically, if there were researchers such as myself who would quite like to know that their research mattered, and was bettering the field, what could they work on?

1. Building products to architecture - the same as pharmaceuticals to medical practice? In what ways can architecture be said to be a creative discipline when by and large most architecture produced is an assembly of ready made parts created by others? Is architecture just an avenue of consumption?

"investigation of what happens when a door is hinged to open both ways", nice, jump.

I think architecture is in a whole it dug itself in by becoming disconnected from urban planning issues while we were gallivanting over the emergent, bottom-up self organizational aspects of favelas, for example.


this interview addresses some of the hard problems

i suppose it is possible for architects to do easy but serious research about technical things. the hard things to ask? I am not sure what is possible to look at in a serious way without changing professions.

I guess it comes down to whether we are to believe architecture is responsible for the problems in our society and in our environment. if we can say yes to that then of course we can do research to work out the antidote. But really who believes this anymore? It seems more normal to say that architecture at its worst is a symptom not the cause. Ole's example is nice but again rather abstract. Are there concrete examples we can look at? Perhaps I missed them.

Staying relevent... stop the madness, have conviction, be disciplined, collaborate more often, get involved and eat more of it.

oh, and another hard problem would be finding a job in this economy... slight stray but still on course.

in terms of society: we do know that the environment (built/unbuilt) plays a significant role in human behavior and social interaction - there's hard data - it's just that architects choose to ignore this research because it's admitting that we might not know what we are doing. plus it isn't as sexy (or heroic) as something like technologically driven formal and tectonic experimentation.

and with other "big problems" - it matters because not only does it affect individual built projects, it affects policy - and there haven't been enough people working in architectural academia who seem interested in seriously tackling issues that affect society (although this seems to be changing). we've relinquished most of the relevant built environment research and policy discussion over to engineers, planners, and social scientists, choosing rather to follow and offer architectural support to the solutions to problems they've already defined.

the "big problems" are not exclusive to any single field either - I think where we lose legitimacy (re: Ole's interview) is that we spend too much time on critical "research" and not enough on empirical research.

what is the capacity for architecture to have 'social' effects? (Presuming that we know what society is, or that asking what it is is unnecessarily abstract).

Clearly architecture doesn't have any kind of sole determining role; but neither would it be true to suggest that architecture has no relation to society (that's a pretty hardcore architectural-autonomy view).

on another line of thinking, are there any questions left to ask around architecture as an aesthetic cultural production?

perhaps the last major questioning along this line was eisenmanian formalism?

i can't speak to the latter question but the first, about how the environment affects behavior, of course we can research it, but that is sociology more than architecture, a serious field that most architects are not particularly qualified to do useful work on. In order to become competent would require stopping architecture for awhile and learning how to do real research that is possible to replicate and not just speculation and not just a record of observations. I guess it is possible, but since it requires switching careers i am not sure if it is the right path.

architecture has a role in life and affects how people live and act, but is that something we can tie to a really hard problem?

what cameron sinclair is doing and what many others, even brad pitt are doing, with new orleans and similar is impressive and i think getting towards a response to very difficult issues. but the real work is not the architecture so much in those instances is it? i kind of get the impression that it is brad pitt who is doing the important work, and the architects are just playing a role that he sets up for them. part of the solution, but only after the heavy lifting has been done....

maybe the question is better asked what are the hard problems architecture can influence?

i'm not asking what questions we're qualified to ask, but what questions we should be asking.