This series of symposia, organized in conjunction with the official Swiss contribution to the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale, aims to stimulate discourse, question preconceived notions, and to expand the open field of architectural research in relation to teaching and design. The seven venues are a critical reflection of design methodologies, networks, didactics, and technologies. Their aim is to debate the meaning of “design research” in the applied discipline of architecture, and to provide alternative takes on a term, and an academic field that still lack sharp definition.

In a time of perceptible technological and socio-economic change, architecture can no longer rely on preconceived concepts, established typologies and design methodologies—nor can architectural education. Rather than perpetuating a particular formal school, academic style, or pedagogical orthodoxy, institutions need to focus on a critical re-examination of design processes themselves, with an aim to formulating new models of collective learning and research practices.

How research can be defined in a field like architectural design? How can research be grasped semantically in a design-oriented, creative-technical discipline? What is the potential value of treating instruction as an apparatus of research? This series of debates thematizes essential points of architectural thought by bringing into focus the conflict and the complexity of spatial, organizational, and production-technical dynamics that characterize any discussion of the discipline. Architecture, almost by definition, is predicated upon experimentation and unwieldy forays into widely divergent inventories of knowledge that challenge and redefine disciplinary boundaries and open up new terrains.