RESEARCH BY DESIGN. Architecture is a Time Machine

Abstract

Abstract Expanding ideas that I previously explored in » Design Research: The Next 500 Years« (Hill 2022), this article considers the contributions to temporal understanding of three analogies: architecture as a time machine, as a history, and as a fiction. Assembled from materials of all ages: from the newly formed, to those centuries or millions of years old, and incorporating varied rates of transformation and decay, a building is a time machine, transporting us to many times separately or simultaneously. Like a history, a design is a reinterpretation of the past in the present. Equally, a design is equivalent to a fiction, freely moving backward and forward in time and between types of time. In conclusion, I emphasize temporal understanding as a means by which to learn from the past, reassess the present, and speculate on future models of practice and discourse.