Paper short abstract:

In one of the Clusters of the Humboldt University of Berlin an organizational experiment has been set up: the Experimental Zone, a space where the influence of spatial configurations on interdisciplinary work practices is observed. Which methodological issues are raised by such an research setting?

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we aim to discuss on a methodological level the organizational experiment that has been set up in the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung of the Humboldt University of Berlin. Called the Experimental Zone, it is a space where scientists from about 25 disciplines collaborate and are at the same time object of observations. Within the framework of monthly Experimental Settings spatial configurations and user instructions are changed purposefully to measure their impact on the researchers' work. The aim of the research project is to investigate the influence of architecture on interdisciplinary research and to specify how space can encourage collaboration and innovation beyond disciplinary boundaries.

The research team of the Experimental Zone has drafted a specific research design and methodology for this organizational experiment. In line with ethnographic research on laboratories (Latour, 1979 ; Knorr-Cetina, 1981), we conduct an ethnography of the working space, with the implementation of specific visual methods like mental mapping. The combination of active spatial interventions through monthly settings and the ethnographic observation of their impacts on research processes has methodological implications: What does it mean to design our own research field? In order to answer these methodological issues raised by our position at the crossroads between fieldwork and experimentation, we have developed a procedure model that defines the successive stages of the inquiry: designing, observing, interpreting. Furthermore, our team itself is accompanied by a participant observation with the aim of adding an "external" perspective to our reflections about our own research.