Architecture touches many disciplines. Many of the parts that make up both the practice and manifestation of architecture can be isolated and studied using the methods of their related realms – science, social science or the humanities, for example. Yet at its core architecture and the act of designing cannot be isolated. It is much too promiscuous an activity to be broken down into controllable elements and its associating parts are often unreliable and unrepeatable. It defies the conventions of research in other disciplines.
To complicate matters the construction of knowledge in architecture is partly through logical methods but to a large extent through tacit means – knowledge of which we cannot speak. To address this, Professor Chard invents and builds drawing instruments that put him in more direct contact with the content that he is researching – indeterminate conditions in architecture.