Architecture holds power beyond the creation of buildings - it is a practice that shapes how people live, interact, and thrive within their communities. Architecture can also be a tool for social innovation. Through an understanding of human-centered processes, participatory design, and social sciences, practitioners can address societal challenges such as loneliness, inequality, and public health to equip spaces as vehicles for social equity and engagement. Architecture's role in shaping the future of communities is a direct response to human needs and activated social change.
MVRDV and Delft University of Technology Release _Le Grand Puzzle_, an Urban Study of Marseille in the South of France. Image Courtesy of HÇläne Bossy, Manifesta
In architecture, most practices revolve around delivering projects to clients. Offices are shaped by deadlines, budgets, and clear briefs. While this structure produces buildings, it rarely leaves space for architects to question broader issues — about how we live, how cities are changing, or what the future demands of design. But alongside this production-focused system, a quieter movement has emerged: studios, collectives, and foundations that prioritize research, experimentation, and reflection. These are the architecture think tanks — spaces designed not to build immediately, but to think first.
The idea of a think tank is not new. Traditionally found in politics, economics, or science, think tanks bring together experts to study complex problems and propose solutions. In architecture, their rise reveals a tension at the heart of the discipline. If architecture is to remain socially and environmentally relevant, can it continue to rely only on client-driven practice? Or must it carve out space for slower, deeper inquiry?
Jingru (Cyan) Cheng . Image Courtesy of Wheelwright Prize
Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced Jingru (Cyan) Cheng as the recipient of the 2023 Wheelwright Prize, a study grant created to support globally-minded research and investigative approaches to contemporary architecture. The winning research project, titled “Tracing Sand: Phantom Territories, Bodies Adrift,” delves into the multifaceted impacts of sand mining and reclamation, understood from cultural, economic, and ecological perspectives. The unassuming material has become an indispensable element for our built environment and human communities, serving as a vital component in the production of glass, concrete, asphalt roads, and artificial land. Yet the process of dredging underwater systems and sand mining leads to the disruption of habitats in a process that simultaneously shapes one habitat while devastating another.
Design research in cooperation with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences and the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity. Image Space Material” at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.
More than any other institution, the Bauhaus Dessau expressed a modern understanding of design that took a sceptical view of antiquated design traditions and substituted these with direct research into materials and the innovative potentials of technology and science.
Since then, design has been perceived as a cooperative discipline that synthesises diverse aspects of knowledge. Since Autumn 2014 the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and Anhalt University of
From June 4–15, 2018, the Department of Design Research, Writing and Criticism at the School of Visual Arts will host its annual two-week intensive dedicated to researching and writing about design. This richly programmed course equips students with techniques for constructing compelling narratives about images, objects, cities, and spaces under the guidance of esteemed writers and editors, such as Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art author and media critic Virginia Heffernan; architecture writer and critic Karrie Jacobs; author, critic, and The Weeklings co-founder Jennifer Kabat; BBC interviewer and Design Observer contributor Adam Harrison Levy; The New York Times...
Molly Butcher, SVA MA Design Research class of 2015, researched the marketing of Martian and extraterrestrial settlements. Toroidal Colony, Cutaway view, exposing the interior. Art work: Rick Guidice. Image NASA Ames Research Center
Do you have a research project you’d like to take to the next level? Are you challenged by communicating your ideas in multiple formats? The rigorous one-year MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism offers a high-impact, targeted program, well suited to the circumstances of established professionals, in addition to graduates wishing to continue their studies at an advanced level.
