Pedagogical practices for supervising project based research in architecture and design

This chapter takes a complementary approach to the first person accounts of individual supervision models outlined elsewhere in this book. It situates the diversity of individual and collective supervisory practices employed within a common framework of research by project within the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University,1 and discusses approaches to supervision that have consolidated around key research clusters involving cohorts of postgraduates undertaking design research with specific methodologies. It presents a range of infrastructural frameworks and supervisory procedures and practices that support and foster a dynamic and innovative research community in this particular school. Further, it addresses a range of supervisory obstacles and opportunities specific to the practice-based design research by project model, concerning in particular how research embodied within and across projects is framed and made legible, and the extension of the supervisory role to support candidates in the subsequent dissemination of their research within the relatively new and emerging economies of practice-based, design research.