ACCIDENTAL RESOURCE A Fable of Design Research through Storytelling

Abstract. Building Stories, an experimental course at the University of California-Berkeley, started its first semester with a carte blanche opportunity and generous support from leading architecture firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, to try and unlock the knowledge capital embodied by architectural practice through storytelling. Five years later, the methodology and resulting stories turn out almost coincidentally to provide a unique resource to study design and designers “in the wild”. After introducing the underlying ideas of Building Stories and their implementation as an operational methodology, the paper reports on its use in three research projects that study quite different aspects of design: the notion of collaboration in the architectural profession, the role of ethics in design practice, and the specific nature of architectural knowledge. 1