Expectations to Academic Critique in Industrial Architectural Research

Abstract

This article discusses the practice of academic critique in industrial architectural research. Based on examples from a PhD project conducted in collaboration between an architecture school and two different industrial partners, it shows the significance of the expectations we hold to critique. Often these expectations prove quite different for one who engages in critique in order to give an account of a broader issue in an academic context, and for the one who becomes involved in this critique in the role of an informant or as representing the studied practice. Focusing on notions of negative and affirmative critique, the article argues that, in addition to the alignment of expectations of interests and aims of the research between the collaborating parties (e.g., PhD candidate, academic institution and industrial participants), there is another kind of ongoing alignment that needs attention in the research process. This alignment concerns the cultivation of an ability to explain and redefine the purpose of academic critique and a readiness to acknowledge that industrial partners often have very legitimate reasons to question the ramifications that the critique may have for their professional practice.