ABSTRACT
This essay explores the reciprocal dialogue between academic and architectural practice and how they add mutual value to one another while constructing a theory of the contemporary. On the one hand, architecture as a cultural, historical, and intellectual discipline offers economic value to an otherwise technocratic enterprise by enlarging the search space for possible solutions. Inversely, bringing these problems into the academic studio offers opportunities for architectural researchers and students to retool and innovate, leading to new areas of research and discourses on form. Studio-based speculation facilitates exploration of past historical models while also unpacking contemporary cultural attitudes that would otherwise go unchallenged at the speed of practice. By coupling speculative research and contemporary practice, new architectural models broaden the contemporary imagination to encompass a more exciting and holistic approach to the mission of collective dwelling and belonging.
