Bridging: The Spatial Construction of Knowledge in Architectural Research

Authors

  • Klaske Havik

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.6.1-2.749

Abstract

This contribution proposes an interdisciplinary approach to architectural research, and states that composition is a methodological act of research. It will first argue that architectural research and practice can gain from a multi-perspectival approach, bringing in knowledge from different fields – in this case the field of literature.

Referring to the author’s recently finished dissertation, it proposes a literary approach to architecture and the city, and explains how the ambiguities of architecture (subject-object, author-user and reality-fiction) can be addressed by literary means. Then, it makes clear that bringing together knowledge from different fields requires an act of composition. It argues that knowledge can be seen as a spatial construction rather than a linear one, and that the mediating capacity of the architect offers researchers with a background in architecture the possibility to develop such spatial research compositions.

Author Biography

Klaske Havik

Klaske Maria Havik (The Netherlands, 1975) is assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology. She studied architecture in Delft and Helsinki, and literary writing in Amsterdam. She writes regularly for architecture journals in the Netherlands and Nordic countries and is editor of the Dutch-Belgian architecture journal OASE. As an architect and critic, she has been involved in a number of harbour redevelopment projects in Amsterdam, The Hague, Helsinki and Tallinn. She co-edited the anthology Architectural Positions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere, SUN Publishers 2009.

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Published

2012-01-01