Refractions - Artistic Research in Architecture

Architecture can be a process of searching for answers, whether in the form of manifestoes, poetics, essays, or physical models or drawings. This book investigates how architects undertake such a search, and perhaps - if the arbitrariness of the process and the directed, reflective effort should coincide happily - discover new paths in the field's topography. Artistic research has been discussed for decades within architecture and other artistic disciplines. Yet clarification still remains necessary with respect to the relation between art and science, and to such concepts as research and knowledge, to the extent that these stand in relation to artistic research. How can certain practices and methods result in particular types of systematic work? What links can be traced, or can be established, between creative work and interpretive work - that is, among ethics, poetics, and hermeneutics? Refractions - Artistic Research in Architecture consists of a series of essays that investigate the practice that we call artistic research. It also contains interviews with a number of researchers, all of whom have worked within the frame of this concept - and presents visual material that attests to the wide compass of such reflective artistic production.