Researching Effects of Architecture and Urbanism (REAU): Interdisciplinary Theories and Methods

• Applicant: Professorin Nina Gribat, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning ; Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 517708225

The conception of architectural and urban planning as well as of public spaces such as parks and squares is usually associated with ideas regarding the social, cultural, political and identification effects to be achieved. However, so far there has been no specification of the actual fields of effect and research methods and theories that prove productive for this purpose. The scientific network "Researching Effects of Architecture and Urbanism (REAU): Interdisciplinary Theories and Methods" responds to this great need for defining the concept of effects of the built environment and bundles disciplinarily scattered knowledge that until now focused on specific, singular fields of effect: on conscious and unconscious perceptions by individuals, on individual or collective patterns of behavior and use, and on the effects that architecture unfolds in spheres such as the economy, social life and culture. Thus, the network focuses its working interest in distinction to the thoroughly researched agents’ intentions during the design or planning phase of architecture. The network aims to bring together the diverse understandings of effect in an integrated concept within three years. Therein, effect is understood as a multi-scalar process in which short-, medium- and long-term effects of a building configuration can only unfold in the context of specific framework conditions. In six meetings, the network will discuss effects in a matrix of different scales and fields of effects. In order to make these as connectable and productive as possible, the impact fields are defined as perceptions, emotions, practices and behaviors, images and discourses, economy and politics. On the one hand, specific theoretical and methodological aspects of the study of effective architectures in each meeting, guided by a scaled sequence from interior spaces, to buildings, to urban space. On the other hand, at each meeting the network considers a selection of related but not yet linked disciplinary approaches to effects research: actor-network theory and practice theory, environmental neuroscience and architectural psychology, architectural history and oral history, impact research and perceptual psychology, qualitative and quantitative social research, atmosphere research, and phenomenological approaches. The network will present the findings of its joint work in an edited volume that will provide the theoretical and methodological fundamentals of effects research as an empirical branch of architectural science.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks