A thematic-analytical review of knowledge production culture in architectural design

Architectural design, whether as a knowledge production process or as a 'means' for producing knowledge, has been the hot topic of theoretical debates since the late 1990s. Despite the developments, it requires more clarity as a young culture in the discipline. This research aims at deciphering the theoretical body to identify and bring the central themes into sight and provide a legible interpretation of knowledge production in architectural design. To this end, a unique methodology, adopted form content analysis, has been utilized. In this paper, a piece of the relevant literature was analysed by a computer application namely NVivo. The analysis has revealed a set of words from which the central themes are extracted. Out of thirty emphatic words, ten central themes are generated. According to the findings, 'design and research', 'design process and methods', and 'newness and novelty' appeared to be the key themes when knowledge production in architecture matters. The remaining seven themes are mainly included in the key themes. The findings show that knowledge production in architectural design is much more influenced by the field of design studies rather than architecture. This study remarks that the objective and generic aspect of architecture is investigated for knowledge production, however, taking architecture-specific dimensions into account could bring new insights into the discipline.