Architectural research has a key role in maintaining a competitive edge

In an era of profound shifts in the built environment, architecture’s role extends far beyond aesthetics, intersecting with pressing challenges in sustainability, technology, and social equity.

Recognising the urgency of aligning contemporary practice with meaningful practical applications, RIBA president Muyiwa Oki convened three distinguished voices for a candid discussion on the future of architectural research and its role in maintaining a competitive edge. The guests represent a rich intersection of academia, practice and funding.

Sarah Wigglesworth is celebrated for her pioneering work on revealing the inner workings of practice. She advocates for practical collaboration in uncovering the future modality of research through applied design in the research funding arena.

Tom Emerson is co-founder of 6a Architects and former dean at the Swiss university ETH Zürich. He lends an international perspective, drawing on the Swiss model’s success in integrating research and practice. 

Finally, Christopher Smith, executive chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), brings invaluable insight into the funding landscape, emphasising the need for a unified approach that bridges practice and theory to champion architecture’s interdisciplinary potential.

Smith articulated it best when he described a lack of coherence in how architecture research is approached within UK Research Innovation (UKRI). This highlighted a shared desire for architecture to be more centrally recognised, with a stronger focus on bridging theory and practice in meaningful ways, particularly through funding and interdisciplinary missions.

The conversation, therefore, is about more than funding; it’s about how we come together to build the ecosystem – from small practices to large academic institutions – to ensure architectural research thrives in an increasingly competitive global context. It touched on research models like the Future Observatory – a national research programme for the green transition – and barriers to entry that, so far, have limited scaled-up participation by the architecture community.

With the next UK spending review on the horizon, it is crucial we advocate for sustained investment in innovative research initiatives, break down silos, and ensure architectural research is positioned to address the urgent challenges facing society today. Together, they shed light on how we can ensure that architectural research remains innovative, impactful and globally relevant.

Collaboration and funding

Muyiwa Oki I think the main goal here is to get a steer on what needs to be done in terms of advocacy, bringing forward more research in practice. Let me start with you, Sarah. Your work since you graduated has been about bringing research into practice and you have had significant collaborations with academia while running a company. From your research, and in your 40 years in practice, what do you think needs to be stepped up?

Sarah Wigglesworth When I was in practice, I couldn't apply for grant funding except as an academic. But as an academic, the work involved had to be done by individuals directly appointed by that institution, even though we were doing design research. So I couldn't use my practice as a vehicle for carrying out that research, partly because there's such a worry about conflicts of interest.

I got a grant to look at older people’s housing and neighbourhoods. The funding was only about 14 per cent of the project cost  – a tiny, proportion and yet it was embedded in what was designed. We were the only team using design as a research tool. We must find a way of trying to overcome these barriers of conflicts of interest, of where money goes and how it's distributed.

Oki Tom, you teach at ETH Zürich, tell us about the context there.

Tom Emerson The funding context is very different. ETH Zürich is essentially an arm of government tasked with educating the engineers, scientists and architects that will shape national infrastructure. It essentially serves both teaching and research functions.

We did an AHRC funding application last year in the UK but I wasn't allowed to be nominated in an academic capacity because ETH is outside the UK.

Oki So, currently, that interdisciplinary nature of the profession is not supported in the research landscape because it falls through the cracks. Christopher, what do you think can or should be done in the architectural profession or research funding to understand this interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary facet and plug into it?

Christopher Smith I do recognise some of the issues that you’re raising. We have worked hard to expand the notion of an active research ecosystem in AHRC grants. But there are legal constraints, such as who research councils are able to fund – either people who are employed by a university or an independent research organisation. There can be project partners but that has with it the unfortunate consequence of only getting directly allocated costs, not the indirect costs.

As you may know, we actively supported the incorporation of the Design Council within the UK Research Innovation (UKRI) when it moved away from direct government funding. So we’re now hosting or grant funding the Design Council.

We also launched a major competition on design with the Design Museum, Future Observatory. The Future Observatory-connected projects have been able to find mechanisms of including practice as well as academic researchers through devolving the funding to the Design Museum and allowing them to be more expansive. That only works at quite a high scale and we can’t do it very often because we don't have enough resource. But there are ways in which we're trying to move forward and I think when one looks at the demonstrator projects within the Future Observatory there are quite a lot of really interesting collaborations.

The funder that can fund business, small and medium enterprises, etc, is Innovate UK. So what we really need to do is a partnership that brings together research councils and Innovate UK, to create a completely different field for funding, so the Innovate funding could fund the practice in more effective ways than we are currently allowed. But we should do so in a joined-up way so that the end-point is a consortium where some part of it might be going to research universities, but the consortium will include proper appreciation of particularly small, medium enterprise architecture consultants and practices. The question is how we how we frame a call.

Wigglesworth There are always barriers to working in the built environment, even with Innovate UK, because grant funding is always couching the sort of terminology of products – with testing and going to market. So it’s not social. It’s not looking at cultural issues. It’s not dealing with communities. It’s not place-based. You know, it’s none of those things. And those are all of the things that we’re dealing with as architects. So we don’t automatically qualify.

Smith That is precisely why I think that architecture is rather uncomfortably situated in the UKRI portfolio, which is what I'm trying to address because I think that what research councils would bring would be a greater appreciation of the ‘product’ which architecture does deliver, but that product is very much in place making, social environments, etc. The green transition ecosystems that we're funding at the moment, through Future Observatory – which is worth tens of millions of pounds - include healthy organisations in place-based ecosystems, like Future Island, which is a piece of work in Anglesey about citizen attitudes and behaviours and spectrum to design development, etcetera. The public mapping platform to help local authorities and helps communities to picture what's happening in places as a basis for informed decision making. And there is work transforming housing and homes for future generations which is about implementing monitoring innovative prototype solutions.

So I think what we need to be able to do is to bring the Innovate competition process into the co-created design of an architecture competition, so that we're influencing their understanding of what the product is. Coupling that with their capacity to fund in a way that research councils can't. I am acutely aware of the fact that where we have been is opposed to architecture as a coherent symbiotic system of practice and research, so that's what I'm trying to change now.

European perspective

Oki Tom, again from the continental Europe perspective. How does practical research align with commercial opportunities? What are the benefits you see in contrast to the UK?

Emerson There are two aspects. First, within the practice environment, certain methodologies or tools from research are often adopted informally. For example, ETH's Block Research Group is researching very thin cement shells, reducing the amount of cement and carbon in buildings by up to 80 per cent. There is a new zero-carbon production building for a Swiss manufacturer that uses this technology – the first real application outside of demonstrators. It's a direct collaboration between researchers and practice-based academics at ETH, developed over decades, which demonstrates the feasibility.

The second aspect is the formal route. There are a significant number of startups coming out of the research environment, particularly in digital construction. The same research group, for instance, has produced software for heritage conservation and repair.

Homes and sustainability

Oki Let's look to the future and the government's aspiration to build 1.5 million homes and a push for sustainability in architecture to address the climate emergency.

Smith We want to think strategically about the 1.5 million homes commitment. Currently, public sector funding is lacking, but it gives us time to strategise. We're still trying to determine exactly which department owns the 1.5 million target — likely the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero rather than the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. This creates opportunities for potential funding.

One concern is that it is unclear whether we need 1.5 million new houses or 1.5 million homes that are fit for purpose. Retrofitting, therefore, becomes a critical part of the conversation, and a real opportunity for research and innovation. We are keen to work with the RIBA on constructing a funding call around this objective. This must be co-created with the entire interdisciplinary community – including social and cultural aspects, engineering, and practice.The social and cultural aspects we would bring with engineering possibilities and Innovate UK for its funding streams to bring practice and theory together. This has to be co-created and co-designed with you. So really, over to you.