First Principles - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 77

Figure 2.12 Research
categorized according to
knowledge and utility drivers.
From D. E. Stokes, Pasteur's Quadrant ,
The Brookings Institution, Washington,
DC, 1997.

Consideration of use?

No Yes

Pure basic
research
(e.g., Bohr)

Use-inspired
basic research
(e.g., Pasteur)

Yes

Quest for
fundamental
understanding?

Pure applied
research
(e.g., Edison)

No

spectrum. This placement led Stokes to suggest a different model that reconciles
the shortcomings of this one-dimensional model (see Fig. 2.12).
This model can also be applied to universities and research institutes. For ex-
ample, within a university, we could have a situation something like Figure 2.13.
The science departments are concerned with knowledge building, the engineer-
ing departments with applied knowledge to understand how to solve society's
problems, and university designers are interested in finding innovative ways to use
this knowledge. For example, the university architect may know what research
has led to a particular design but may want to synthesize better design solutions
in terms of energy use, aesthetics, materials, and place. The architect is behaving
much like Thomas Edison, who was most interested in utility and less interested
in knowledge for knowledge's sake. In addition, the architect must work closely
with the managers of the operations programs of the university, who maintain the
systems called for by the designer. This is not to say that innovations do not come
from the lower left box in Figure 2.13, because they clearly do. It simply means

Figure 2.13 University research
categorized according to
knowledge and utility drivers.

Consideration of use?

No Yes

Physics and
Chemistry
Departments -
Pure basic
research

Engineering
Departments -
Use-inspired
basic research

Yes

Quest for
fundamental
understanding?

Facilities and
Maintenance
Departments -
Operations
only

University
Architect -
Pure applied
research

No