Felix Kabo talks research in the AIA’s Practice Management Digest

The AIA’s Practice Management Digest recently highlighted the importance of research in architecture and featured various firms devoted to clarifying the subject of research in the profession. It aims to set the record straight on what defines research in architectural practice. 

In the piece was the full interview with Dr. Felix Kabo, CannonDesign’s Research Practice Director, where he was asked a variety of questions, including: “Why does your firm devote resources to research?” and “What topics do you focus on in your research?”

Below in an excerpt from the article: 

Rebecca Edmunds: Why does your firm devote resources to research?  

Felix Kabo: I came aboard because I recognized that research is critical to the firm's goals. CannonDesign is committed to a very clear ethos, or a philosophy or approach, called Living-Centered Design. Living-Centered Design basically fuses the best of human-centered and systems approaches to the design process.   

The firm is investing in research because it can help us operationalize Living-Centered Design. Research can help us make our work more replicable; it can make the work more reliable because we have more data-informed solutions.   

In a sense, we're all designers. We're all coming up with creative solutions to thorny and wicked problems. But what we are striving for is this idea of hypothesis-driven design, hypothesis-driven thinking. Because the alternative is a normative approach of letting your gut or instincts lead you in the process of creating architecture.   

If we get to that point where we engage in a hypothesis-driven design and thinking, then it will elevate and transform our impact on human life, on society, and then our work resonates beyond just our clients. So, that is the goal.   

We have these lofty Ambitions as a firm, and we have embraced the idea that research is the engine that can help us realize them.