by Tracy Ostroff
Contributing Editor

How do you . . . forge research partnerships with universities?

Summary: Cal State Poly Pomona and HMC Architects have forged a relationship that benefits the cash-strapped, state-funded school and provides data for firm projects. Like other universities and firms, the two are finding that there is benefit in collaborations that provide research and teaching opportunities for architects, faculty, and students.

With architectural commissions hitting a slow spot in many areas of practice, architects may be looking to collaborate with academic institutions on research projects for ideas that had been on the back burner while client demand—and demands—were strong.

But for others, these issues have been on the minds of faculty and architects for many years before the economic downturn. For example, California-based HMC Architects’ Ontario office partners with its neighbor Cal State Poly Pomona. Some of the principals and many of the staff are university graduates, so there are always strong ties among the school, the Ontario office, and the firm at large, says HMC Principal Kevin O’Brien, AIA, LEED-AP.

O’Brien was a full-time professor at Cal Poly before going to HMC eight years ago, so like many of his colleagues he had a relationship with the school. HMC donated his time to conduct a studio, and they are using the class to investigate school design.

“For the students, it gives them access to the types of projects we’re working on in our practice,” O’Brien says. “The benefit for the firm is that it exposes us to a different way of thinking where there is a freedom of thought and the opportunity to take the program type and explore it more in depth.” The course investigated the state of the classroom, what it is right now, and where it could go in the future. They explored emerging technologies and fabrication methods, and researched new materials. They started with a desk, which O’Brien says they playfully called the “undesk,” and eventually created “The Agile School.” They are considering a subsequent studio that would look at a patient care room.

The donation also offers an opportunity to support the state-funded school. “They are always struggling,” O'Brien says. The arrangement did come with a few strings, however. The school had to promise to donate the money saved from the teaching services and use it to buy something to benefit the students. The university fulfilled its obligations by purchasing a laser cutter.

HMC is considering ways to extend the experience beyond the studio by finding a way for select students to continue into the summer, and possibly of publishing some of their work and lending their efforts to the firm’s focus on evidence-based design. They have also discussed teaming with educators in child development to take an even deeper dive into these issues.

It’s an arrangement that Cal Poly Pomona Architecture Professor and Chair Judith Sheine says she heartily welcomes in dire economic times for the school and her program. She says she’s been approached by another firm about a joint research project in sustainability, but hadn’t pursued it. Now, that’s all changing. Sheine says the donated studio is a great way for architects who do not have the funds to sponsor a studio to contribute to the classroom.

Meshing schedules, priorities
University faculties say they are well-positioned to collaborate with designers to pursue research projects. For example, Mahesh Sengala, chair of Ball State University’s Department of Architecture and its Irving Distinguished Professor of Architecture, points to a roundtable discussion he and colleagues had while soliciting comments and feedback from the larger student and alumni community.

“The question that we have to ask,” he posited during the discussion, “is: What does research mean in the context of practice, what are the strengths of the university, and how can we come together with practitioners and explore what is of value to both? In practice, what we look for is, first of all, applied research, and secondly, perhaps, research related to evidence, particularly in terms of post-occupancy evaluations, or even before construction begins, evidence about the way the building would perform.

“The strengths that we can bring to the table are: we have the resources, we have the people, we have the facilities, and we have a system that is supported by the university to conduct research in a systematic manner ... We [at the university and School of Architecture] can bring these sets of resources to the table and partner with practice to explore these together.”

“There are certain things that we are very well-equipped to do,” says Guillermo Vasquez de Velasco, dean of the College of Architecture and Planning. “We are well-equipped for education, very well-equipped for research. Yet we see there are a number of firms that, instead of coming to us on certain aspects of education and research, will develop their own operation, a research arm, or what sometimes they call their own university within the firm.” He, of course, wishes they would collaborate with his school instead.

New partnerships
Almost all the university faculty contacted for this article thought this moment was an excellent chance for new working partnerships. Some did note, however, the discord of schedules—with schools on the academic calendar and student schedules, and architects on the perpetual calendar of deadlines and client needs—make it difficult for such associations to materialize.

Still, Sengala says there are examples of these things coming together, so that even a small firm of one or two people or a collaborative team could enter into partnerships with universities and compete in terms of innovation and cutting-edge technologies. “Not just technologies, but also handling the project, managing the project, and getting it built, and then being able to evaluate, to have the evidence to be able to say that it has been a successful project from design all the way to construction and in service,” he says.

Vasquez de Velasco says: “I don’t know if that’s a product of perhaps feeling that building a relationship with the university is more costly or more difficult than going off and doing it by themselves or if they consider that the kind of knowledge base that we are prepared to provide is no longer matching their needs. For me, this would be more of a concern, because we want to keep in sync, keep a position in the cutting and leading edge, and keep a partnership with those firms.”