The Bezalel Institute for Spatial Studies is an incubator for the development of current research in the fields of architecture, urbanism, landscape and the environment by researchers from Bezalel and guest colleagues. The research institute is a platform for critical thinking, exchange between researchers and for research that complements and supports the ongoing academic work of the School of Architecture. 

The research that will be promoted at the institute will encourage concrete and critical thinking, with the intention of raising a new and alert generation of researchers interested in social, spatial and environmental issues, with high research, documentation and representation skills, original and productive people of culture and art, planners who strive to deeply examine and redefine the fields of knowledge and action in the conflictual local environment and the changing global environment of the present time. The institute will promote projects of importance which are not necessarily on the agenda of the professional practice or the commercial market but which have a specific academic value. An open and polemical intellectual framework should foster the tension between the academic-theoretical discussion and the social, economic and political reality.

In addition to encouraging and accompanying comprehensive studies funded by research funds in Israel and abroad, the institute will support ongoing work of a research nature by the teachers and students at the School of Architecture. The institute will support, collect and develop valuable materials accumulated in the various studio, laboratory and course settings at the school, as well as make them accessible to students, the teaching staff, the professional community and the public through a series of conferences and seminars, publications, social media and digital platforms.

The research institute will focus (in the first phase) on studies and projects under the following thematic groups:
1. The social-civil-political space 
2. Anthropocene, environment and climate 
3. History, theory and criticism of architecture
4. Urbanism and ruralization
5. Material culture in the built and open environment
6. Critical Conservation and Historic Urban Landscapes

These clusters will form the basis for the establishment of dedicated research laboratories, each in its own field. These laboratories will enable specific collaborations with other departments in Bezalel, as well as outside it.