Research as Ethical Practice: Academic Goals Aligned With Community Needs

Abstract

Finding a relationship between the necessarily narrow and often arcane topics that are the focus of faculty research efforts, and the more general format of problems given to their design studios can be a challenge for educators at any level in an architectural program. To then reframe the research for exploration in the community proves especially difficult. This paper illustrates a fortuitous trio of collaborations leading from a research idea to full-scale improvisation in a design/build studio and then to significant applications in impoverished Native American and Latino communities. The opportunities for interweaving research, teaching and community service are acknowledged, as well as the concomitant instances of ethical conflict. Viewing these projects holistically, the research agenda is identified as a thread connecting the various projects in a way that adds value to them other than their immediate contribution to the community or to the students involved. Out of several years of residential design-build projects in low-income communities grew a research agenda, independent of any one project but linking all of them, focused on the evolution of low-cost methods of building with rammed earth.