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We see the role of research-by-design as a unique form of knowledge generation, complementary (not opposed) to hard-science. As a form of epistemic repair, this mode of knowing is especially needed now in light of changing atmospheric, social, economic and political climates - not the least of which are issues of decolonisation, decarbonisation and global reckonings with systemic inequities.

Climate catastrophe, disciplinary accountability, and fundamental concerns of design-justice associated with racial, cultural and settlement diversity worldwide present significant challenges to typical modes of research and knowing. New theorisation regarding architecture and architectural practice are emerging regularly: Black Feminist and Queer theory, Indigeneity and Attunement, Liquid Modernities, to name a few, are constructively unsettling conventional modes of thinking about, with and through architecture. Research-by-design extends the the capacity of design praxis to build relationships, address wicked problems and build new, emancipatory and reparative worlds and futures.

As a transdisciplinary practice, it is is especially suited to address these concerns, and, we hold, allows for new tools to foster networks of solidarity across disciplinary boundaries. These tools are analog and digital, old and present, but above all, they are collective and guided by an ethic of tender care. Research-by-design is an act of designing and looking for an architecture enacted otherwise for intentional future making and world building. As such, it allows for a re-casting of expertise, a re-definition of said expertise as the sole province of the so-called specialist. Research-by-design, we argue, is an agent of epistemic and material repair.