ABSTRACT: This paper examines how architecture is building a clinical database similar to that of law and medicine and is developing this database for the purposes of acquiring complex design insight. This emerging clinical branch of...
moreABSTRACT: This paper examines how architecture is building a clinical database similar to that of law
and medicine and is developing this database for the purposes of acquiring complex design insight.
This emerging clinical branch of architectural knowledge exceeds the scope of everyday experience of
physical form and can thus be shown to enable a more satisfying scale of design thinking. It is argued
that significant transformational kinds of professional transparency and accountability are thus
intensifying. The tactics and methods of this paper are to connect previously disparate historical and
contemporary events that mark the evolution of this database and then to fold those events into an
explanatory narrative concerning clinical design practice. Beginning with architecture’s use of
precedent (Collins 1971), the formulation of design as complex problems (Rittel and Webber 1973),
high performance buildings to meet the crisis of climate change, social mandates of postindustrial
society (Bell 1973), and other roots of evidence, the paper then elaborates the themes in which this
database is evolving. Such themes include post-occupancy evaluation (Bordass and Leaman 2005),
continuous commissioning, performance simulation, digital instrumentation, automation, and other
modes of data collection in buildings. Finally, the paper concludes with some anticipated impacts that
such a clinical database might have on design practice and how their benefits can be achieved through
new interdisciplinary relations between academia and practice.
