eCAADe 1994 - PDF-Proceedings (conversion 2000) 127 5.5 CAAD-CAAI Integration by means of High-Impact Small-Scale R&D Projects Guillermo Vásquez de Velasco & Antonieta Angulo Faculty of Architecture Delft University of Technology Berlageweg 1, 2628 CR Delft, The Netherlands Pointing towards the ultimate goal of instrumental integration between our instructional and professional environments, the paper deals with the articulation of small scale R&D projects that, due to their consistency with main-stream tendencies, can have considerable impact on allowing people, institutions and enterprises to perform a relevant role in our dynamics of "Continuing Professional Development" and "Practice-Based Learning". The paper presents the results of a European Union R&D Project that aims to empower small and medium size enterprises of the building sector with the knowledge needed for the development of multimedia programmes with pedagogical value. The paper is explicit on addressing not only the achievements but also the difficulties that the consortium of European partners had to face, and makes reference to a future spin-off project that follows the same tactical approach. Scenario For quite a few researchers, conceiving Research & Development projects of large, medium or small scale can be a frenzy habit. We can not help ourselves from identifying research paradigms everywhere. The raw formulation of research paradigms can be fun, but to elaborate consistent research projects is a different story. Our real problem starts when we need to fragment large scale projects into short term targets, or we need to articulate a number of small scale projects towards "relevant" objectives. In addition to this, as if not sufficiently entangled, we must face the task of relating fundamental research with development research and application research, within a R&D community where not everyone has the same view of "who should be doing what". As far as our experience can tell, by the end of the 1980s some research sponsoring institutions were still willing to finance a number of fundamental research adventures, but as we now sample present tendencies, we can not dare to make further fundamental proposals. From our point of view, we see that the responsibility of performing fundamental research is being largely forced into the hands of our universities, and that due to financing limitations, research contractors will need to concentrate on development and application research. We believe that PhD research will need to come back from narrow research subjects to address the scientific fundaments from which long term objectives may be drawn, and that research contractors will need to address the opposite research spectrum where short term targets are identified. University scholars and contract researchers will need to establish partnerships in which large scale projects may find development feasibility and small scale projects may accomplish articulation and contextual relevancy.