Research Report Outline

As a way of ensuring I was motivated in researching my proposed topic, I brainstormed a few key interests of mine and made links between these ideas and the UN sustainability goals. Some of my key interests include architecture, new technologies and engineering. After identifying links between my interests and the UN goals, I went on to delve deeper into my skills which entail problem solving, construction and CAD knowledge as well as my completer/finisher Belbin role. Below is a venn diagram which illustrates the discussed key points that contributed to finding an adequate literature gap but also a topic that ticked all my key interests, skills and the UN sustainability goals.

Through the initial brainstorming I decided to pick the topic of biophilic design within a kitchen space and how this affects the user’s health and well being which ultimately links to one of the UN’S sustainability goals. It took several attempts of rewording the title to ensure I had the correct way of wording and one which draws the reader’s attention. Some versions of the title were:

• How does biophilic design influence the function and aesthetics within a kitchen space?
• How does biophilic design influence the way a user reconnects and interacts within the kitchen space?
• Biophilic design and the implications it has on the users ability to reconnect and interact within the kitchen space.
• Biophilic design and the implication it has on the users well-being and their ability to reconnect to nature within the kitchen space.

After creating several titles with slight variations, I finalised on the last bullet point since it contains enough key topics to research and detail to expand on within the report. It also explicitly states what effects Biophilic design has on the user’s health which allows me to bring one of the UN sustainability goals into the proposed title.

Shortly after the introduction of our dissertation, we are required to state our aims, objectives and thesis statement. The difference between the aims and objectives is that the aims are designed to highlight to the reader what we hope to achieve whereas, the objectives are detailing the actions required to reach these aims. The ‘Solent Online Learning’ website shows the key words to use when stating our aims and objectives through using strong verbs such as collect, construct, measure and synthesise. The website also shows the ‘SMART’ technique for creating our objectives which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Constrained. In essence this technique is designed to make our objectives simple, clear and concise without overestimating or creating objectives which are not achievable or measurable. With all this in mind, I created the aims, objectives and thesis statement below;

Aims:

• Investigate how biophilia allows users to re-establish a connection to nature
• Investigate the ways in which biophilic design integrated within a kitchen space can affect a user’s health and well-being
• Explore the level of impact biophilic kitchen designs can have/has on the user’s ability to reconnect with nature.

Objectives:

• Analyse the concept of biophilia and how this has developed within the architectural industry
• Collect and construct a sample of data to reflect on the relationships between biophilic kitchen areas and the benefits on a user’s health and well-being
• Collect and analyse data on the current levels of biophilia in a user’s kitchen area and the current impact on their health and well-being

Thesis Statement:

• ‘Biophilia has become an increased focus point when designing kitchens since users feel more reconnected to nature resulting in a passive improvement on their health and well-being’

The research report outline requires the literature review section to be completed which involves reviewing current secondary research surrounding the proposed topic. Through utilising the Winchester OneSearch library tool and the Ebscohost database, I conducted through research surrounding the topic of Biophilic design, impact of design on a user’s wellbeing and the level of reconnection to nature within a kitchen space.

Initial research shows there is a substantial literature gap between the effect of biophilic kitchen designs on a user’s health and wellbeing. In order to bridge this gap, I broke my title down into components and researched each key word/section individually. Numerous Journal articles and books such as ‘Nature Inside’ published by the RIBA, discusses Biophilic design in critical detail allowing me to grasp the fundamentals and begin to understand the complexity within this method of design. The research highlights how Biophilic design can be broken down into three principles; Nature in the Space, Natural Analogues and Nature of the Space. Through understanding these three principles and the differences between them, I was able to interpret other articles and their contribution to the literature surrounding Biophilic design. The research report outline provides further links and comparisons between these sources.

The other two components researched was the effects biophilia has on a user’s wellbeing and the concept of Biophilic design in the kitchen space. To help make further links between these sections, I created a spreadsheet which I used to log which resources I had reviewed and critically read and the information which could be useful to expand upon. If you would like to view the spreadsheet, click here.

I constructed a project timeline, as shown below, to ensure I dedicate enough time to each aspect of my dissertation as this will effectively allow me to produce a high standard of work. As shown in the timeline, the initial preparation tasks, such as the brainstorming and title development, only took a matter of 6 weeks due to their simplicity when compared with the literature review. The literature review fulfils a large section of any dissertation as it outlines and analyses the existing literature surrounding the given topic. Throughout semester 1 I proposed to continuously conduct secondary research, even after starting to draft my literature review, as this would ensure that I kept up to date with the existing and ever-changing literature. Ultimately, I dedicated 7 weeks to my literature, however, after reflection I feel I could have allocated more time to my research report outline as phase 2 took significantly more time than planned running closer to the deadline. This caused some initial frustration and stress and having experienced this I may have to adapt phase 3 and phase 4 of semester 2 to ensure this doesn’t happen again or to allow myself more contingency should any tasks be overrun.

For phase 3 of semester 2 I have devoted 11 weeks to finalise the methodology and analysis section of my dissertation. My conducting of research through the dispersal of surveys and completion of interviews should take no longer than 4 weeks as I feel this is enough time to collect the necessary data. Depending on the volume of responses, the data analysis and discussion section may take up a considerable amount of time due to the amount of data I will need to interpret. Therefore. I have allocated 6 weeks to produce several drafts that provide the correct overview and analysis of the collected results. With regards to phase 4, it is primarily associated with reviewing and mitigating any errors or mistakes prior to the final submission for this degree.

A challenge I was confronted with during phase 1 and 2 was identifying a literature gap that was sufficient to allow me to construct a dissertation on. However, this challenge was resolved through preliminary research and I was able to find both a literature gap and a topic that interested me. Another challenge was collecting enough information and statistic surrounding the topic to form links and comparison when writing the literature review. This is because I have identified a clear literature gap meaning there is very little literature available which is useful to create strong links between the current research and my proposed topic. During the next semester, it may be more beneficial to find and use an architectural journal/article database or another tool to search the research surrounding my key topics or sections.

As part of our submission, we were required to present a 3000 word research report outline detailing what we propose to research further and the current literature surrounding our topic. Using all of the components above, I compiled all the aims, objectives and research and provided a conclusion to summarise the work conducted in year 3, semester 1. To download a copy of the report, click here.