Next is Ken. We’re doing this collaboratively, in the interest of collaborative research.

Ken Ross:
The second question we considered is what kind of institution or grant formation needs to support our research agenda. We need to get away from the turf and the silos of the design professions and the industry at large, but we need to be much more inclusive, much more collaborative. We need to start thinking of ourselves much more as the American Institute of Architecture rather than just as architects.

There also needs to be a transformation of the practice model where we understand that there is a methodology that parallels practice and complements research. It starts with defining our hypothesis. Not just coming along and doing a post to document the evaluation and then define the questions later. That’s not a sound form of research and will not have a lot of credibility that we really need. We need to inform the practice dialogue on what that means. We also feel that one of the transformational roles that the AIA can have is to really become a leader in the advocacy and the leveraging of resources supporting research.

The AIA brand and credibility really needs to be brought to this situation. In our discussions, we realized that the AIA isn’t going to be able to fund all of this, but we can create the seed money. It will only grow rewards if it indeed has the credibility that goes with that money. What we choose at the beginning of the research, as supporting the research, was the need to have a high level of credibility. This would establish our position in the marketplace, opposed to just funding at a higher level.

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