Scaffolding: Discourse, Disruption, and Progress in Architecture as a Cultural Production

This paper examines how discourse promotes progress in architecture as a discipline. More specifically, a framework of meta-discourse is proposed for such progress through ‘scaffolding’ among the four realms of architectural investigation: design, research, forensics, and education. Scaffolding here refers to progress made by the interaction of professional, academic, occupational, and disciplinary actors. Historical-interpretive and qualitative methods provide supporting evidence for how such disciplinary realms and actors within them overlap, interact, provoke, and scaffold the entire discipline.

keywords: Discipline, Framework, Theory, Practice, History