Take 1 Searching

Sharpen your research focus

With the experiences from Take 0 in which you described your own living situation, we now approach houses and inhabitants that can potentially inform our research. Your search in Take 1 builds the selection and therefore basis of your house and housing biography that you will research and document together with the inhabitants. It is important to know that according to an action research approach, we don’t study the participants, but rather research with them (Kromrey 1998; Chatterton et al. 2007; Altrichter et al. 2010). You and the participants will have to negotiate the procedure as well as the usage and publication of the documented data.

Reflect once more how you have produced your own housing biography. Which aspects did you find particularly interesting? What questions have you raised? In what (social, architectural, political, ecological, economic) ways of living do these questions matter? What kinds of cases could be of interest to you? Think about how you arrive at the respective cases using your interest and your questions. Do you approach the field via the ‘type’ of housing or via the ‘type’ of inhabitant? We use an extended understanding of living. Living comprises activities in the flat, in the house, but also in the city / village / neighbourhood (Häußermann and Siebel 2000; Hannemann 2014; Dell and Kniess 2009). Taking it from here, choose one interesting case and take to the field (Lindner 1981; Wolff 2013).

Entering the field and communicating

Make contact with the respective owners and/ or tenants or with your future research participant and plan a first date. In a first rough sketch, explain your

• (1) research interest (How can house and housing biographies demonstrate current ways of living and how can this potentially lead to approaches for future ways of living?),
• (2) research methods (in particular: house tour, conversation, interview),
• (3) kinds of media (film and photography during and after the house tour; audio for the conversation and interview; also: drawings of the floor plans and the building, the block and the location within the urban plan, as well as archival and document research about the flat, the house and themes that result from the biography),
• (4) scope of your research (at least two to three visits and possible further visits) and
• (5) your way of using the documentation (step 1 of informed consent for study purposes, step 2 informed consent for research purposes and (online) publication of your project).

Talk with your research participant and explain the two-step procedure for gaining informed consent: step 1 (documentation for study purposes) means the research participant consents to participate in the research and production of a house and housing biography and to undertake the necessary steps together with you. All collected data and material will be used only within the university for learning purposes and will not be published.
Step 2 (documentation for research purposes and (online) publication) means that the research participant will see the collected and analysed data and materials in form of the finalised house and housing biography. The participant can then grant consent for the house and housing biography to be published (first and foremost in the archive urban-types.de) via a licence (CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-ND). Which licence applies is subject to negotiations between researcher and participant.

When you talk to your research participant, make sure that the latter is interested in your research and ask for oral consent.

Presentation and documentation

Produce a short outline of your research case on the basis of your conversations and the further collected data. This outline shout comprise a short descriptive text (300-500 words), a fact sheet (or profile) with the most important facts about the house and its inhabitants as well as one representative image of the case and an overview of the sources and potential formats that will be used in your house and housing biography. Collate these materials on a double page A4 portrait.

Please use the Chicago Style Manual for quotes, citations and references (https://www.tandf.co.uk//journals/authors/style/reference/tf_ChicagoAD.pdf text: Chicago Manual). Organise, archive and use your research material according to the current ethics, legal and data protection guidelines (EU DGSVO; §27 HmbDGS).