Research and practice. The concept of usefulness toward a common purpose

In 2012, the EAAE (European Association for Architectural Education) drafted the Charter on Architectural Research, a document that defines and directs research in schools of architecture. The document was updated in 2022, but the points I would like to focus on remain almost unchanged from the first version. The paragraph Criteria and Characteristics for Quality states: “Architectural research meets the general criteria of originality, significance, and rigour. It produces forms of output and discourse proper to disciplinary practice, to make it discussable, communicable and useful to relevant audiences.” I want to focus here on the meaning of the word useful within architectural research. Later, in the same text, we read: “[...] the research is meaningful and relevant for design practices, for the discipline, for society, for culture; it explores limits and expands them”. In addition to being original because it produces new knowledge, and rigorous because it adheres to a specific shared method, research must therefore be significant, useful, meaningful, and relevant. In a discipline like architecture, which is based on a practical operation, such as designing, how useful is theoretical research and the production of new knowledge that is not specifically technical?