Aporia In Architectural Design

This project is concerned with the nature of knowledge in architectural design. Despite the increasing variety of approaches to design practice and design studies, the nature of design inquiry remains controversial. The primary aim of this project is to cast a new light on the nature of design inquiry by combining the concept of aporia with design inquiry. Traditionally, the term aporia denotes a perplexing state of mind and a problem at hand caused by equally plausible but mutually exclusive propositions. Thus understood, aporia is either a searching or a stopping device in an inquiry, or both. We situate aporia within the previous accounts to detect if aporia is compatible with them and if it can supplement these accounts. We analyse concrete examples of situations in architectural design when, due to an emerging contradiction, a shift in inquiry becomes necessary. In these aporetic situations, designers lose traction in their inquiry because they discover equally good reasons to think two or more things, such that these reasons stand in an apparent contradiction to each other. The project explains that, on the one hand, encountering aporia in architectural design enables and generates the inquiry by establishing the necessity for a shift in design approach. On the other hand, aporia specifies the elements in the design situation that must be changed, supplies the direction, and propels the inquiry. We demonstrate that to understand the nature of design inquiry fully, at its best, and to claim that design inquiry can lead to knowledge, it is necessary to suppose that aporia (as traditionally understood) occupies an important place in such an inquiry. The project examines the reasons for design inquiries to be aporetic and considers the consequences of this on epistemological claims in architecture.