Practice-Based Research: Elizabeth Christoforetti

Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti
founding principal, Supernormal

Lightning presentation
9:45 am - 10:00 am EDT
What Does IP Have to Do with Design Practice?

How do you define practice-based research?
Every project begins with one or more research questions that allow us to advance an idea or technology that exceeds the specific requirements of the project brief. The territory that is applicable beyond a given project is classified as research.

What is the biggest barrier to practice-based research?
Time and money.

What is the value of practice-based research?
We are curious and it makes practice more fun. We like the idea that we have the opportunity to contribute to a discourse that is larger than client-architect interaction, and we find that the research we are passionate about ends up yielding better and more future work.

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Elizabeth Bowie Christoforetti is founding principal at Supernormal, an architecture and research firm based in Cambridge, MA. Supernormal combines design expertise with emerging digital processes to balance cultural relevance with the contemporary imperative to scale beyond a single design, to reach more people and more urban places. Elizabeth’s current work pays careful attention to urban systems, human cultures, and the evolving constraints of physical development. She has served as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab and is currently Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she teaches design and leads research within the Laboratory for Design Technology.