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Research Publication

Towards Interdisciplinary Collaboration? Boundary work among architects and social scientists

pp 108123
24 November 2022

Abstract

With the growing focus on cities being intrinsic to societal development, interdisciplinary collaboration is increasingly encouraged in tackling urban challenges and producing urban form and architecture. Through in-depth interviews with Norwegian architects and social scientists working in collaboration to solve such challenges, this article investigates how they see their own collaborative efforts, and how they define interdisciplinary work. Far from being straightforward, interdisciplinary collaboration creates a number of complications. It is scarcely defined, resulting in varying processes and outputs. It is sometimes used as a dubious strategic label in projects, while being resisted by architects and social scientists who seek to collaborate while protecting their own fields. In response, this article discusses different experiences of what interdisciplinary work is as well as its setbacks and possibilities for architects and social scientists who carry out such boundary work. Based on the interviews, we analyse the underlying problems hindering interdisciplinary collaboration, while looking into catalysts that encourage collaborative efforts and interdisciplinary outcomes.

Keywords

  1. interdisciplinarity
  2. collaboration
  3. architecture
  4. social science
  5. boundary work

Introduction

Today, a wide range of actors subscribe to the idea that several of society’s problems demand interdisciplinary and interprofessional solutions. The United Nations Sustainability Goals may serve as a prime example in their focus on a holistic understanding of what such problems are, as well as how they suggest the problems should be countered through interdisciplinary approaches and partnerships (UN General Assembly, 2015). Within this emerging discourse, urbanism and a focus on cities and the built environment have become one of the predominant perspectives, based on an increasing recognition of the role cities play in the structuring of contemporary society (Haarstad et al., 2021). Thus, just like in other parts of contemporary organisational and working life, professionals working with cities and urban settings are susceptible to the trend of interdisciplinary work (Bryant & Duncan, 2019).
In a Norwegian context, the government guidance document Medvirkning i planleggingen (Public Participation in Planning) (2008), made citizen participation a prerequisite in spatial planning in Norway (Plan- og bygningsloven, 2008, § 5.1; Regjeringen, 2018). Following this, large-scale, government funded spatial planning initiatives like the now discontinued Framtidens byer (Cities of the Future) pushed for more integrated citizen and private enterprise involvement in urban planning (Kommunal- og moderniseringsdepartementet, 2016, 77-78). To cater for such involvement, participatory processes and related methodology became central aspects of planning projects and can now be said to be a mainstay for architecture and planning firms bidding for spatial development projects. But facilitating participation and analysing outcomes of such processes requires competence outside of classical architect training. Norwegian municipal and county governments that demand competence in running participatory processes have increasingly sought teams consisting of a mix of architects/planners and social scientists to carry out multidimensional spatial projects (for an example, see Kommunal- og distriktsdepartementet, 2019). As a consequence of these demands, several Norwegian architecture and planning firms have recognised that if one is to meaningfully include and uncover interdisciplinary perspectives, the use of methodologies capable of accessing social and cultural structures are necessary (Røe & Vestby, 2012). This entails hiring social scientists on a project or permanent basis or establishing new interdisciplinary firms.
We posit that interdisciplinarity has become an ‘imperative’ mode of work within the production of architecture and urban form. The expectation is that it will generate new and better responses to the increasingly complex problems that come with e.g., urbanisation and climactic changes. Hence, practitioners and clients alike embrace it. But, despite this increasing demand for, and provision of, interdisciplinary services, there has been very little research or discussion on how interdisciplinarity is achieved, what it means in a practical sense and how it affects the fields (and professions) of architecture and social sciences, and the firms involved. Without any clear definitions of interdisciplinarity, architects and social scientists often struggle with collaborative work that requires both expansions on, and possibly contractions of, professional domains. By collaborative work, we mean all forms of work where different fields have to relate to one another. Collaborative work can be interdisciplinary, but, as we will see, it can also take other forms. In this paper, we explore collaborative work between two groups of actors that play a major role in our understanding of urban landscapes and in the development of these, namely architects and social scientists from the fields of sociology, psychology, art history and political science.

Various modes of collaboration

In order to better understand how architects and social scientists collaborate, we need to make clear the variations in the types of collaboration that these actors partake in. Multi-, inter- and trans- are all used as prefixes to both -disciplinary and -professional in the literature to describe forms of interaction or collaboration. There are many examples of the three words being used interchangeably, but several authors have argued that in the interest of enabling a precise analysis, they should convey different meanings in terms of the mode of collaboration (Alvargonzáles, 2011; Mahler et al., 2014). In a much-cited literature review, Choi & Pak (2006) establish clear distinctions between multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary, and offer the following definitions:
Multidisciplinarity draws on knowledge from different disciplines but stays within the boundaries of those fields. … Interdisciplinarity analyzes, synthesizes and harmonizes links between disciplines into a coordinated and coherent whole. … Transdisciplinarity integrates the natural, social and health sciences in a humanities context, and in doing so transcends each of their traditional boundaries (Choi & Pak, 2006, 359).
To elaborate on the definitions, food-based metaphors are given. Multidisciplinarity is like a salad bowl, where “ingredients remain intact and clearly distinguishable” (Choi & Pak, 2006, p. 359–360); interdisciplinarity is compared to a melting pot, for instance “a fondue or stew, in which the ingredients are only partially distinguishable” (Choi & Pak, 2006, 360); and transdisciplinarity is compared to a cake where “the ingredients are no longer distinguishable, and the final product is of a different kind from the initial ingredients” (Choi & Pak, 2006, p. 360).
In this paper we will be distinguishing between multi- and interdisciplinary work, as these are the two forms of collaboration that are sought after by clients and are also practised by firms in a Norwegian context. They are also terms that tend to be confused with one another, leading in part to frustration among collaborators, as well as highly varying outputs and some negative side effects to which we will return.

Competition and collaboration between professions

As a vantage point for examining collaboration between architects and social scientists, a discussion on the terms discipline and profession is also useful. The term discipline is commonly used to describe “a body of knowledge or skills that can be taught and learned” (Alvargonzález, 2011, p. 387). It should be possible to separate one discipline from others through it having its own approach to an area of interest, a set of skills, distinct methods, use of rhetoric, etc. The term profession is related to the term discipline but is not the same. A profession utilises knowledge from a specific discipline or several disciplines and employs these in practice, usually in ways that are highly relevant for the development of society. Professions tend to be highly autonomous, as a result of high degrees of self-organisation and specialised knowledge (Borgen & Støren, 2011).
In studies of professions and organisations, both collaboration and contestation are well explored phenomena, and new forms of interactions between professions manifest regularly. Such interactions have been coined boundary work (Taminiau & Heusinkveld, 2020; Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010), understood as a variety of processes, ranging from translation of practises and knowledge, negotiation between professions to the barring of competing actors within a field of work. Insight into such processes has proved important for understanding the introduction of new practises in a given field of work, as well as insights into “how particular professions and professionals have dominated particular areas of work and fields of knowledge via the establishment and maintenance of professional boundaries” (Taminiau & Heusinkveld, 2020, p. 355). At the same time, boundaries have been found to be anything but stable as they are constantly being negotiated through various forms of boundary work (Bos-de Vos et al., 2019). For the purpose of this study, boundary work is taken to be any form of work on the margins of one’s own field that leads to collaboration – or conflict – with other fields. This collaboration could be interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary but could also, in the case of conflict, take on nefarious forms like that of barring, or even colonisation.
In a study on accounting firms, Taminiau & Heusinkveld (2020) used the term colonisation to describe how tax advisors became sidelined and marginalised by representatives of the accounting profession, partly as a result of new regulations. The term colonisation was also used by Thorne (2002) to describe how clinical doctors in the UK NHS responded to an increasing influence of managerialism in hospitals. Through colonising the field of management by utilising the role of clinical director, the doctors were able to uphold the power and influence of the medical profession. Colonisation has also been used to describe how architects attempted to “expand their scope of work and new definitions of the architect’s role” (Bos-de Vos et al., 2019, p. 149). The use of a term with such clearly negative connotations indicates not only that conflict levels can become high between professions in boundary work, but that negative ramifications of such work should be taken seriously and sought dealt with pre-emptively.
However, interactions between professions are not always conflict laden. Ramsdal & Helgesen (2019) found that although it may be difficult to identify generic factors that can predict success when professions collaborate, it is possible to identify success factors by looking at the organisational context of each case. Thus, they identify four contextual success factors for collaboration, namely (i) avoiding “wedging” teams into an organisation not prepared, (ii) part time team workers vs full time team workers (the latter being more efficient), (iii) number of tasks and degree of complexity the team must handle (more complex=less efficient), and (iv) relational factors (non-hierarchical structures=most efficient).

Barriers and overlaps between architecture and social sciences

Despite little research on the collaboration between architects and social scientists, various forms of interaction between the fields have occurred for decades. The types of collaboration, their popularity, and also any shared ideological impetus have waxed and waned with time. This has in part been driven from within the fields; many claim that there are natural overlaps between social sciences and architecture. But we also see tendencies where collaboration is driven from “the outside”, promoted through politics and societal upheavals. Among those subscribing to a “natural” linkage between fields is renowned architect Stefano Boeri, who works with teams of architects and social scientists in many of his projects. Boeri claims there should be a natural “oscillation” between research and design in the production of architecture – another metaphoric description that seeks to capture the concept of interdisciplinarity. Boeri admits this oscillation is problematic, however: “When you work as a researcher, you have to enlarge your knowledge, include all the possible information. But when you act as a designer, you have to totally change the approach, you have to be selective, exclude possibilities and arrive to one unique physical configuration” (Erman, 2019). This statement hints at a divergence between research (typical of social sciences) on the one hand, and design (typical of architects) on the other. Even though Boeri brings these disparate epistemic positions together in his work, there are long standing traditions of barriers between the disciplines.
Mendes and Sá (2017) hold that the intrinsic link between spatial and social organisation should make for natural overlaps between the philosophical positions of architecture and e.g., anthropology, but that this linkage has been hindered by an overly technical focus in architecture developed through modern science and e.g., the highly influential Chicago School (p. 33–34). Still, such barriers can be overcome, often driven by political motivations: Mendes and Sá’s research suggests that linkages and overlaps are wrought through dialectic shifts. They draw on examples such as the anti-capitalist movements of the 1960s and 1970s in France that provided grounds for the merging of design and social sciences (36–37), and in Portugal where housing programs were developed in the intersection between sociology, anthropology, architecture and urban planning in the same period (41–47). However, a review of large-scale infrastructural projects in Oslo in the 1950s and 1960s shows that the division between professions was at times a case of rhetorical chest puffing more than distinct philosophical dividing lines. Project examples show how there were several pragmatic collaborative efforts between e.g., architects, economists, geographers and engineers, even in the “heyday” of the master architect (Wergeland, 2013, p. 205–276). In Kenya, examples of interdisciplinary collaboration between urban planners and sociologists go back to 1948 with the development of the Nairobi City Master Plan (Ese & Ese, 2020). This, however, was a collaborative effort based on dubious, and ultimately racist motives, “proving” the scientific merits of implementing segregative policies.
These few examples show that while there may be reasonable, internal professional arguments as to why interdisciplinarity is sought, there also exist anything from pragmatic to politicised reasons for combining social sciences and architecture. We will not speculate in positioning the current Norwegian focus on interdisciplinarity between architects and social scientists in relation to this history, but the interviews carried out for this article indicate that there can be a number of potential obstacles that stand in the way of any natural interdisciplinary collaboration.

Methods and data

Our data stems from in-depth interviews with architects with experience of working with social scientists and social scientists with experience of working with architects. The social scientists were, as mentioned, from the fields of sociology, psychology, art history and political science. The architects were, in addition to architecture, trained in the fields of landscape architecture and urban design. The participants predominantly had their education and work-life experiences from different parts of Norway, although there was some variety among the participants both regarding the location of their education and work experience (mainly the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark). Candidates for interviews were selected with the purpose of gaining information-rich (Patton, 2002) data related to the research questions. Sampling of participants was performed according to a specific form of purposeful sampling, where cases are identified and selected according to one or several predetermined criteria, a technique categorised by for instance Palinkas et al. (2015) as stratified purposeful sampling. In the methods literature, this strategy is described as especially suited for research projects where data should enable researchers “to capture major variations rather than to identify a common core” (Patton, 2002, p. 240). As the goal of this study was to compare and contrast two different groups of professionals, stratified purposeful sampling was considered a sound sampling approach.
A total of 12 participants were interviewed. A general criterion for selection was that participants should have extensive experience with working with architects (for the social scientists) or social scientists (for the architects) in building design or planning processes. In practice, this meant that participants either worked within self-defined interdisciplinary practices where architects and social scientists were part of the same organisation or had extensive experience with project work, for instance as consultants.
In addition, two sampling criteria were used to ensure variety among participants. These were:
a.
professional background of participant
a. architect (7 participants)
b. social scientist (5 participants)
b.
type of organisation the participant works within
a. private/government developer (2 participants)
b. architecture practice with expressed interdisciplinary approach (4 participants)
c. consultancy firm (4 participants)
d. research institution (2 participants)
After selection, the participants were contacted by either the first or the second author and were presented with both oral and written information about the purpose of the study, information on data handling and confidentiality. Due to practical issues like workload, two potential participants had to decline partaking in the study. Thus, a total of 14 potential participants were contacted and 12 participated.
The first interview was conducted by the first and second author as a team; the rest of the interviews were divided between the authors. During all interviews, a pre-written, semi-structured interview guide addressing themes in accordance with the research questions was used. All interviews were conducted in October and November 2021, and due to local Covid-19 restrictions in Norway, most interviews were done using a secure Zoom interface (Howlett, 2021). The interviews varied from 45 to 120 minutes in length, the majority being between 60 and 70 minutes. Audio from the interviews was recorded, and all interviews were transcribed verbatim by a professional transcription agency. The transcribed material was thematised, coded and analysed by both authors according to the principles of Systematic Text Condensation (STC) (Malterud, 2012), although the predefined research questions and semi-structured interview guide limited the degree of “openness” towards the data recommended in the first step of the STC strategy. The data from the interviews are presented in the results section either as direct quotes or as summarised descriptions of the contents, and a number representing the interviewee(s) is always provided as reference. Since we contacted more people than were able to join, the numbers assigned to interviewees does not reflect the real number of participants in the project (12).
All participants in the study were informed both orally and in writing that they at any point could withdraw from the study. All participants signed an obligatory consent form based on a template from the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. The study, including the data handling plan, is approved by the Data Protection services at the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (Project no. 565337). Due to concerns about anonymity issues, some participants requested to review the quotes and references used in this article before submission, which we allowed.

Analysis

The interviews contained dense descriptions and opinions of work processes and workflows utilised when architects and social scientists work together. This included preferences on what types of skills should be utilised for which tasks, which tasks and skills collaborators would tend to use or be assigned to, and how one’s own professional field overlaps with other professional fields. Thus, different approaches to the boundary work (Taminiau & Heusinkveld, 2020; Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010) performed between architects and social scientists became visible, ranging between openness to others to the deliberate use of mechanisms and tactics to protect one’s own profession. The analysis also pointed to concerns regarding strategic and political use of interdisciplinary labels by actors seeking to advance their own position in the field.

Unclear definitions of interdisciplinarity

Understandings of what interdisciplinarity was differed, and were even conflicted, between what Choi & Pak define as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. While most social scientists seem to have reflected on the distinction between the two modes of collaboration, some architects talked of multidisciplinarity as interdisciplinarity. All interviewees found interdisciplinary work between architects and social scientists to be important, and that it was something that, if done right, could provide more to a project. Understandings of interdisciplinarity, and views on how it was done right, differed, however. Some architects talked about interdisciplinarity as a multi-headed approach to problems. “It’s about co-creation,” said interviewee 4. It is not much different from collaborating with an engineer to understand the technical aspects of a building “that allows you to better understand what it is you’re doing” (4). This pragmatic approach to interdisciplinarity was shared by others who saw the benefits in collaborating, but not necessarily associating with social scientists: “I think we [architects] come across as working for a developer. . . My experience is that they [social scientists] tend to be a more neutral party than us” (6).
As Choi & Pak point out, there are clear distinctions between multi- and interdisciplinarity, affecting not only ways of collaboration but also project outputs. Without a shared understanding of whether their collaboration was multi- or interdisciplinary, the interviewees noted that working on projects could lead to frustration. While interdisciplinary teams were often encouraged by clients in many projects, there is a notable lack of discourse on what it specifically means to be interdisciplinary when producing architecture and urban form. Without this, many interviewees were relegated to discussing interdisciplinarity simply as the overlap (or lack thereof) between skills sets. The practical implications were often that the collaborative projects the interviewees referred to were a result of parallel work processes with social scientists working on one aspect of the project and architects working on another. The handover (e.g., a feasibility study) would then consist of the two parts with little or no synthesis between the parts.
Many social scientists wanted more synthesis to occur. To some, this synthesis was the translation of social analysis into physical form – form that responded to “social issues and actually seeing people, and wanting to change things that don’t work too well” (1). With such overlaps, interdisciplinary work was about embracing risk. “It is not supposed to be easy. It is actually supposed to be a little bit hard [because] we come from either different traditions or different backgrounds and speak different professional languages” (3). This, said the interviewee, leads to creative friction, and that “sometimes, in that friction there is a big potential” (3). Interdisciplinarity in the field of architecture and built form is a process that successfully creates “a connection between more evidence-based or knowledge-based approaches and human needs and human development” (3). But there has to be reciprocity for this to be “eye-opening” and “inspiring”: a balanced overlap between fields. Interviewee 1 argued that, although increasingly accepted, the idea of friction and reciprocity has historically been avoided by architects. Why is this?
From the interviews, we can point to some explanations. Architects, steeped in the technical and craft-orientated history of their profession, tend to be wary of “outsiders” taking part in design processes. While some architects believed this was “down to customs and lack of time” (4), social scientists felt that architectural practices were inherently non-interdisciplinary in their organisational culture as a way of protecting the architect’s field. “The existing structures within the organisational culture that tend to reproduce themselves,” said interviewee 3, “They do not create the framework for truly interdisciplinary work. They make that interdisciplinary work non-functional.” To the architect, research-based input “that can inform aesthetics” (3) is controversial because it threatens the architect’s domain. Architect interviewees agreed that at a certain point, the dominant mode of work needs to be creative, requiring a skills-based approach to design – skills held by architects (4, 5, 6, 11). In other words, working with social scientists means introducing aspects of other disciplines into what Borgen & Støren (2011) would define as a profession: a domain with historically clear demarcations. Architects differed in their way of handling this.

Pragmatic considerations

One group of architect interviewees saw social scientists and architects as providing discrete, non-synthesised contributions to a project, e.g., a socio-cultural analysis of an urban area, and a design intervention in the same area. Both contributions had merit but were not necessarily produced in accordance with one another, apart from common project meetings and administrative discussions. Together, however, they represented “more” than a design intervention on its own.
For this group of architects, simpler collaboration seemed to be chosen as a pragmatic way forward, using a multidisciplinary approach to collaboration akin to Choi & Pak’s salad bowl analogy (2006), while also engaging in barring (Taminiau & Heusinkveld, 2020). Such strategies might be seen as a response to the (believed) risks of architectural projects derailing when social scientists add complexity, although interviewees listed more pragmatic reasons: several architects (e.g., 2, 4, 5, 6) felt that structural and organisational issues were in the way. Some of the challenges highlighted were lack of time or lack of funds. Others agreed that a scientific approach might prove useful in some cases (e.g., 2, 11, 12, 17), but that many projects were not geared towards interdisciplinary thinking. Not all architect interviewees could be categorically defined, however. “I would really like to see them more involved in designing form and discussions about aesthetics,” says one architect (4). But although several social scientists (1, 3, 15) gave examples of projects where they had been involved in design, examples of such collaboration were few, even though explicitly asked for. Some (1, 3, 10) more readily mentioned projects where their design related input had been dismissed.
Given that the definition of interdisciplinarity in the production of architecture and urban form is unclear, many of the architects positive to collaboration were referring to what would be more correctly termed multidisciplinary rather than interdisciplinarity. In these instances, letting social scientist get “more involved” often entailed a practical division of labour (2, 4, 6). Although they worked in environments that either defined themselves as interdisciplinary, or where interdisciplinarity was expected by clients, they avoided major overlaps between fields by letting social scientists work on early-phase processes involving data collection. The architect then took over to carry out designs or physical planning. Projects were like relays. The architects were not hostile to the idea of overlapping skill sets but tended to see social-science fields (especially processes involving analysis and social groups) as complex and outside of architects’ domains. They did, however, see the benefits of collaboration as a way of reaching or enhancing project goals. “We do what we are required to do by law [in terms of participatory processes with residents],” said interviewee 6, “but if we want to do more than that, like workshops, there’s definitely a lot to be gained [by including social scientists]. Participatory processes aren’t a part of our education.”

Strategic positioning

The other group of architects wished to include social scientists into early phase developments of projects for strategic reasons: to position themselves for future project phases and bids. “We all [architects and social scientists together] do pretty much everything,” says one architect (11). “Doing workshops and doing field observations, whatever.” But although social scientists were “in the discussion” regarding design decisions, they were not capable of drawing: “You need six years of training or more to learn how to do that” (11). With this form of working method, these architects were indeed performing interdisciplinary work but mixed with barring strategies and what Bos-de Vos et al. (2019) dubbed colonisation: in this case, the takeover of traditional social science skills by architects. One architect explained this as being a result of the drawbacks that the division of labour inside of a project could result in. “I don’t like the distance that occurs between the ones writing the report and the ones who take over the project and execute [designs]” (5). This handover creates a knowledge gap, he said, best avoided by allowing the ones doing the design to also carry out the analysis. Arguments in favour of such an approach varied between architects being well equipped to handle all parts of a project, even when it requires “traditional” social scientist skills (5, 11, 12), to architects being natural hubs in projects because they are trained to tackle project complexities and a variety of professional inputs (2). Social-scientist interviewees felt the takeover of social-science skills by architects was a strategic choice, meant to marginalise other disciplines. Interviewee 1 argued that architects fear losing projects due to complications: “Interdisciplinary work is always secondary to the architects. … To them, it’s a tool to get into position to be able to design.” Once in position, the interdisciplinary collaboration becomes less important to architects, who have divergent goals from social scientists. “Interdisciplinarity is a primary objective of social scientists working with architecture and urban issues” (1). Another interviewee felt that architects were not knowledgeable enough to make proper use of other fields: “We tend to get cut off from the project at a certain point. … I think it’s down to a lack of understanding of what it is we can provide” (10). In a similar vein of thought, architects that had expanded the definition of architecture felt that others held narrow and traditional views of what an architect is and does: someone that designs houses. “If there’s something architects are preoccupied with, it’s showing that they have drawn stuff,” said one social scientist. The architects however, highlighted their voracity: how they do social science work (1,15, 17), research (5, 11), master’s degrees in urbanism (15, 17) and strategies (2).

Boundary work is difficult

Even though some architects conducted interviews, or collected and analysed data, some also acknowledged that as a whole, the profession of architects did not have the theoretical or methodological training that social scientists had. “There is a profound lack of methodology [amongst other architects],” said one (11). Another said “There is a lot of focus on learning to draw. … [Social science methodology] is not prioritised at the schools” (17). The sentiment among several architect interviewees (2, 5, 11, 12, 17) and some social scientists (3, 10, 15) was that this ought to be prioritised, though. But because of the differences in architects’ and social scientists’ training, overlapping domains were fraught with conflict. “I am not trained to be [artistically] creative; I am trained to be critical and analytical. That … is a very hard position to have,” said one social scientist (3). Architects (11,12) agreed: “When you work with scientists [they] always have a process and a method and everything has to be proven. … Then you work with an architect, and it is all about the feelings” (11). This shows how the interviewees struggled when confronted with conflicting modes of work, relating to Taminiau & Heusinkveld’s findings regarding boundary work where particular professions and professionals have dominated particular fields of knowledge (2020), as well as Boeri’s observation of disparate epistemological traditions (Erman, 2019). But to some of these architects and social scientists, fighting the urge to simply split between tasks was intrinsic to interdisciplinarity succeeding. Being mutually appreciative of input from other fields was central: “I consider myself lucky to work with architects that understand the need for a more analytical, . . . or evidence-based approach … to their creative process.” (3) The success of such undertakings was, however, hampered by opposing motivations for why the fields need to overlap. Social scientists tended to feel that their analysis should contribute directly to architecture, influencing functions and designs (1, 3, 15). Some architects, on the other hand, felt at home in what could be said to be traditional social science skill sets (5, 11), effectively barring social scientists from partaking in design processes.

Visualising diverging positions

If we attempt to create groups within our interviewees based on their understanding of own and others’ skills sets, none had mutual overlaps between skill sets. That is, neither social scientists nor architects considered there to be one common skill that people from both fields commanded competently. The interviewees mentioned a number of tasks and skills that go into collaborative projects. For the sake of analysis, we chose to group these terms into five broad tasks or skills categories that best captured the discussions on boundary work in the interviews. These were:
1.
Construction principals
2.
Building design and aesthetics
3.
Spatial layout and functions
4.
Human or individual considerations
5.
Societal considerations
As our goal here was to coin terms that best represented the totality of discussions on boundary work in the interviews, the terms should not be viewed as an attempt to sum up all skills pertaining to architecture or the social sciences. The skills described by the interviewees can be seen as relational and partially overlapping and, in total, represent a typical workflow in the projects discussed with interviewees. 1, 2 and 3 can be thought of as typical architect skills, while 4 and 5 are traditional social science skills.
Based on the different opinions on what tasks (1–5) were best performed by either architects or social scientists, three different groups stood out. The first group comprised all social scientists. They felt their contributions to interdisciplinary projects should include more than social analysis, and that they should be involved in task 3 as well as 2. For simplicity this group is called social scientists. The second group was the sub-group of architects who felt that their own contributions should stretch well beyond design, and that architects should be involved in the full spectre of tasks (1-5) in interdisciplinary projects. We have chosen to call this group radical architects. The third group was the second sub-group of architects who segregated between architect and social scientist skill sets, in line with what might be seen as traditional demarcation lines between architects and social scientists. This group considered multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary work to be much the same. We have chosen to call this group pragmatic architects. Figure 1 illustrates how the three groups differ in their views on what tasks should be performed by architects and social scientists and will be used as a backdrop to relate the results to previous research on boundary work.

Success factors

Interviewees that framed interdisciplinarity as something more than just collaboration were asked to highlight projects or situations where they felt interdisciplinary collaboration had worked. They were then asked to reflect on what they thought were success factors that distinguished these processes from others. While there were variations on what factors were most important, three were repeated by the interviewees, of which at least one or more were present in successful interdisciplinary work: a shared ideology among the participants, a shared understanding of project objectives among participants, and good personal fit or flexible personalities.
Shared ideology: Some interviewees (e.g., 5, 11, 12) clearly indicated that there was an ideological or political undercurrent in the work they do – or ideally wished they were doing. To some of them, a shared ideology would be necessary in collaborative efforts: “I wouldn’t mind including social scientists in the mix … but I would have to find someone who could elaborate on our political agenda,” said interviewee 5. “I used to be politically active … but I didn’t get to use that part of me in a regular architectural practice,” said interviewee 12, who is now working with participatory processes in an interdisciplinary firm. The lack of ideological impetus in architecture was echoed by interviewee 11: “the big [architecture] offices … were serving capitalism and the forces that are destroying our planet. … It was never about … how we can change society and make a better world.”
Shared understanding of project objectives: Other interviewees felt that in order for interdisciplinary collaboration to work, it was important to have a shared understanding of issues at a project level. Interviewee 15 argued that those involved in a project needed to be passionate about overarching goals. Others (e.g., 2, 4) agreed, also indicating that the type of project is important. “We should be doing this [interdisciplinary] work in the housing sector as well,” said interviewee 4, “but there isn’t that kind of interest in the market.” For the time being, commissions with large public programs – like libraries – were the ones that allow for more thorough, interdisciplinary work, he said.
Personal fit: Getting to know people in your team, and knowing their strengths and weaknesses, was a recurring theme in interviews. Since interdisciplinary collaboration often occurred between fields with limited overlaps, personal relations mattered. “A sociologist is a person who has studied sociology,” mused interviewee 1; “You need to know her to know how to use her.” Age and intersection between schooling and personality was also a recurring theme. Interviewee 2 was hesitant towards working with “old school” architects because their “alpha dog” behaviour impeded the interdisciplinary processes: “They take up too much space, perhaps. They don’t listen enough. They’re there to tell others what they think and that thinking happens too much in solitude, perhaps. But this kind of [interdisciplinary] work, where you’re supposed to listen and take part in a process – that requires another kind of competence.” The sentiment was echoed by several others. Interviewees 1, 3, 5, 10, 11, 12 and 17 were highly ambitious in their work, but, said interviewee 11, it is important to remain humble and open to others.
Flexible organisational structures: Type of organisation and size of organisation were also frequently mentioned as determinants for interdisciplinary collaboration. While 1, 2, 4 and 5 mentioned that non-flexible organisational structures in general could be an impediment to interdisciplinary collaboration, interviewees with experience from larger firms (3, 12, 15) specifically felt that smaller firms tended to be more dynamic and thus catered for interdisciplinary collaboration in a better way. Interviewee 10 felt that firms in Oslo, regardless of size, were vying for position more than firms elsewhere in the country and therefore were more difficult to collaborate with.
Position in organisation: Social scientists’ experiences of how interdisciplinary they felt processes were, and how valued they felt, also depended on their position. The social scientists we interviewed (1, 3, 10, 12, 15) had worked at different levels in a variety of organisational structures. In their perception, the success of interdisciplinarity increased with the power of the social scientist in the structure. “I am in a position of more power now. That gives me privilege – or efficacy – to influence some of the decisions that are made” said interviewee 3.

Conclusion

Each of the groups – the social scientists, radical architects and pragmatic architects – all had distinct views of how skills were distributed between social scientists and architects, as illustrated in Figure 1. The figure thus provides insight into how representatives from the respective fields viewed one another and how they, to varying degrees and in various forms, used different aspects of boundary work to position themselves in multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary projects. Although not specifically discussed as such, all groups reflected in their own way over what Boeri refers to as “oscillation” (Erman, 2019). There was seemingly consensus among the interviewees on the difficulties in finding useful overlaps between fields that often had opposing philosophies; whereas the social scientists amassed information and problematised issues, architects looked to find singular solutions.
In attempts to deal with this problem, the groups employed different strategies. We found several examples of attempts of what Bos-de Vos et al. (2019) would coin the colonisation of the professional field of others. Social scientists wanted more influence over parts of the traditional set of architectural skills, and radical architects attempted to master the entirety of the interdisciplinary skill set, a finding that is in line with earlier findings on the architect as a jack-of-all-trades or Swiss army knife in projects (Bryant & Duncan, 2019; Birdi, 2019). As with the boundary work of accountants and tax advisors (Taminiau & Heusinkveld, 2020), these attempts to control other fields caused both contention and annoyance among those who felt controlled. Radical architects were most successful in their attempts, while social scientists only partly succeeded. Similar to the tax advisors who were colonised by accountants (Taminiau & Heusinkveld, 2020), social scientists felt undervalued by architects as they ended up losing the “colonisation game”. As a result, the successful attempts by radical architects to control other fields led to interdisciplinarity but in a form that not all stakeholders were content with.
Pragmatic architects employed another boundary-work strategy, by barring social scientists from certain tasks, leading to a form of multidisciplinary collaboration. This is a strategy also observed by Taminiau & Heusinkveld (2020), but where the auditors used legislation to bar tax advisors, pragmatic architects used structural and organisational hindrances like lack of time, lack of funds or type of project to bar the social scientists. This was an effective strategy, leading to a heightened degree of segregation between social scientists and architects in what was intended to be interdisciplinary projects, thus questioning whether the projects actually were interdisciplinary. The notion of segregation is strengthened by the fact that few actual examples of social scientists being involved in design processes were given during our interviews, although they were explicitly asked for. The successful barring strategy led to contributions of social science being reduced to the first phases of a project, in line with how Styhre (2011) has found that architects prefer collaboration with other disciplines.
Perceptions of the degree of intentionality behind the different forms of excluding boundary work varied among the groups. Most explicit were the social scientists who claimed that the strategies were employed knowingly and strategically by the architects, motivated by a desire to shield the artistic parts of the work process. This would be in line with previous research on architects where artistic work is considered the core identity of the profession that must be protected from disturbances (Ahuja et al., 2017; Cohen et al., 2005; Styhre, 2011). However, several interviewees observed how this tendency seemed to be easing up with a new generation of architects, hinting at the dialectic aspects of interdisciplinary work driven by larger societal changes (Mendes & Sá, 2017). Least explicit were the pragmatic architects, who stated that segregation was not an ideal state but a necessity stemming from factors related to projects and organising. None of the groups highlighted their own intentionality of doing boundary work that deliberately limited others; on the contrary, all groups stressed the importance of interdisciplinary work and believed a blend of social science and architectural approaches to be beneficial.
Although intentions of succeeding in interdisciplinary work may be present, boundary work is difficult and full of obstacles (Taminiau & Heusinkveld, 2020; Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010), and social scientists and architects have provided no ubiquitous exception to this. With little research done on interdisciplinary work within architecture and urbanism, few systematic lessons learned have been drawn up, and architects and social scientists working in interdisciplinary constellations have had to draw on their own experiences and often hard-earned lessons in order to make collaborations work. Nonetheless, the interviewees point to some success factors from the projects that actually succeeded in being interdisciplinary, or through thoughts on what might lead to successful collaboration. Several of these are in line with previous findings on successful interaction between professions (Ramsdal & Helgesen, 2019), like personal compatibility and flexible organisational structures. Issues like ideology, shared project understanding, and positions of power in the organisational structure provide interesting expansions on these success factors. However, this project does not provide the necessary data to develop a full set of best practices for architects and social scientists working in concert. The suggested success factors point to issues that need to be implemented as organisational structures and tested for them to be useful. As they stand now, they are anecdotal.
Lastly, we argue that the lack of examples in our material of social scientists actually participating in design processes is surprising. Firstly, the majority of participants in the study were selected because they worked in organisations and/or projects that branded themselves as utilising social science to improve architecture and urban form. Therefore, they should be able to give many examples of designs rooted in social science. Secondly, the idea that collaboration between social scientists and architects is essential for tackling urban societal challenges is popular well beyond the interviewees selected for this study. It is reflected in how urban development projects are commissioned by public as well as private actors where teams that include both social scientists and architects are often preferred when commissions are assigned. When design rooted in social science is encouraged or even demanded by clients, it is surprising that examples of it actually occurring are few. Although it is difficult to conclude based on our material alone, one might suspect that interdisciplinary work between social scientists and architects is not as common in real life practice as it is in the discourse that is found in the strategic documents of governmental agencies and the marketing pitches of interdisciplinary firms and consultancies. There was a tendency in the interview material that both architects and social scientists were positive to the concept of interdisciplinarity as long as it provided a possibility of expanding their own fields. However, for someone to expand their domain, others would have to give. This resulted in resistance. If this is the case, the mechanisms where professions protect their own boundaries might have been underestimated for too long, as interdisciplinarity continues to be purported as imperative to tackling urban, societal challenges.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editors of the special issue Christina Juhlin & Cecilie Sachs Olsen for bringing to the attention of urban researchers a question of academic and practical importance, as well as their attentive follow up of this article. Furthermore, we would like to thank our peer reviewers for a thorough reading of our work and for providing very useful advice. We would also like to thank Østfold University College for financial support that made transcription of the interviews possible.

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Volume 2Number 224 November 2022
Pages: 108123

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Published online: 24 November 2022
Issue date: 24 November 2022

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Associate Professor, Institute of Urbanism and Landscape, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Jo Ese
Associate Professor, Department of Welfare, Management and Organisation, Østfold University College

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