AA Research advances the study of ideas, architecture and urbanism, and society. We cultivate the highest quality of scholarship to enable cultural change, drawing on our global tradition and recognition for shaping architectural thought and possibility at once. Our central values are originality and substance, where rigour and imagination, empiricism and theory, critique and proposition, mutually constitute each other. We support work that is globally comparative, historically longue-durée, and disciplinarily meshed, towards ‘big ideas’ evidenced by fine-grain analysis.
AA Research acts as an agency, facilitating the practicalities of scholarship and its influence, so that scholars can focus on meaningful thinking and making. Our in-house services connect talent to material to audience to world: early-stage project development, intellectual mentorship, lab and researcher support, resource access negotiation, grant application assistance, editorial guidance, publishing and communications direction, global events and exhibitions platforming, and application targeting with makers and practitioners. As an independent and democratically structured organisation, we continue to operate outside of the conventional university research frameworks and metrics, bound to the principle that deep discernment and originality are nurtured by association.
AA Labs draw from the expertise of an interdisciplinary cohort of fellows including architects, artists, policymakers, engineers, scientists and creative entrepreneurs. They are driven and supported by grants and Lab Partners, and carry the potential for additional external investment to be contributed as the research develops.
Action Lab is a coalition of students, units and programmes that treats action and participation as the basis for design and research. It acts as a platform for live engagement and intervention into existing sociocultural, economic and policy structures, to explore real and speculative change. The Lab develops forms of advocacy, with the objective of building a basis for shared information, documentation and strategies for change.
The Lab’s first task is to consolidate the knowledge and projects accumulated throughout the AA’s long history of direct action. The aim is to make this work accessible both within and beyond the school as the basis for more in-depth and ongoing discussions with professional bodies, local groups and policymakers across a range of scales.
