Combining Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Design Thinking (DT) as an Alternative Research Method in Architecture

Architecture as knowledge and practice is expanding its fields more than ever in this now entangled exciting new collaborative world network. We argue that the true nature of architecture is participatory one. Thus, architecture should be positioned as a social situation–it is neither affecting nor within. With this, we propose Participatory Action Research (PAR) that promotes ‘empowerment, equality and social justice for all’ as a framework for an alternative research methodology in architecture. Although PAR is still debatable as an academic research methodology, its growing popularities since the past decades could not be simply overlooked, especially when the reality of the world is now the connected one. With the same spirit, we adopt Design Thinking (DT) as a tool to complement PAR in architectural research method. Undoubtedly, the combination of PAR and DT will eventually enrich architectural research with new social and participatory dimensions.