Pocket-Size Architectural Notebooks and the Codification of Practical Knowledge

Architectural design research through reflection: a sub-approach under “research by design”

“…Journals, which can also be interpreted as mind and action maps, describe and provide an alternating process between knowledge formation and transfer. It allows for mind and action research (Schatzman and Strauss, 1973;Newbury, 2001;Pedgley, 2007;Merrill, 2017). It can change according to the person and reflection, can develop over time or (preferably) can be reversible.…”

Recontextualisation and the teaching of subjects

“…Recontextualisation may therefore involve determining which additional elements should be appropriated together with a selected element of knowledge, and deciding which are irrelevant. Studies of architectural knowledge in the early modern period have also drawn attention to how systematic knowledge with practical application across multiple contexts is transformed over time through the input and consideration of multiple 'practitioners' engaged in similar problems (for example relating to architectural construction) (Merrill, 2017). Moodie (2020) has discussed how this operated in the context of ale-brewing and artillery, highlighting how knowledge is transformed when it is 'expressed at a different epistemic level for use by a different type of actor for a qualitatively different purpose from the initial practice ' (p. 14).…”

“…A further insight of such studies is the focus on how different types and applications of knowledge coalesce around specific problematics and practices. Both Merrill (2017) and Valleriani's work indicate the interconnectedness of systematic and non‐systematic knowledge within amalgams of ‘artefacts, instruments, codified practical knowledge, how‐to descriptions, recipes, concepts, theories, and rules’ (Valleriani, 2014a, p. 3). Recontextualisation may therefore involve determining which additional elements should be appropriated together with a selected element of knowledge, and deciding which are irrelevant.…”

Specialized, systematic and powerful knowledge

“…Not all this knowledge was explicit, and in the early modern period, systematic organization of the knowledge was sporadic and came in various forms. For example, architectural technical knowledge was recorded in notebooks which included drawings and models that were overladen with iterations of construction designs in ways which would have been comprehensible only to the initiated specialist (Merrill, 2017). Moodie (2019) highlights how knowledge gained through the practices of brewing and gunnery was increasingly recorded and recontextualized into partially codified forms that could be circulated among practitioners.…”

“…In the case of architects in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, notebooks containing annotated diagrams and design recipes were shared with collaborators and across generations. While the requirements of each building may have been different, the notebooks provided an indispensable reservoir of accumulated knowledge and a record of innovation (Merrill, 2017). With ongoing technological development, it has been possible to codify and endlessly (re)categorize and organize data in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.…”