People Places Practices. The Architect’s Filter in Using Ethnography

“Architectural ethnography” has attracted increasing attention thanks to studies by Albena Yaneva and practices and research carried out by Momoyo Kaijima with her Atelier Bow Wow. Starting from these well-known examples, this essay reviews the literature on ethnography as used by architects, planners and researchers interested in forms, materiality, and uses of space in everyday life. This review is then used to define, through convergences and distances, a specific positioning we have been assuming while conducting research and teaching design-based courses. This path has led to further reflections on knowledge processes in architectural ethnography and to a tentative (and open) checklist to express our positioning in teaching. At the same time, the mainstream view on the innovative aspects of architectural ethnography is challenged by a reflection on the extent to which ‘tradition’ (in a positive sense) is apparent in this recent stream of research, given that good architects (and planners) have always been, in a certain sense, “ethnographic”.