Acknowledging Voices in Architectural Ethnography Architectural Behaviorology / Ethnography of Design Practice

Abstract

The following text seeks to think critically on the definition of Architectural Ethnography from two different approaches: the architectural and the anthropological. Thus, on one hand, the understanding of architectural ethnography as spatial recording through drawing as the main tool to describe reality; on the other, the sociological approach based on the observation and description of architects practice through the application of STS theory and ANT to the office environment as the main source of knowledge. This piece aims to trace back a bibliographical genealogy of these two different approaches while identifying recent contemporary literature of each in order to precise the nuances of the way they understand and define architectural ethnography. Wether one approach or the other is more or less precise is out of the scope, but the relation between the two and their associated bibliographies might help to expand the field and definitions of architectural ethnography itself.