Our Research Group sees its role as ‘taking the temperature’ (by survey) and ‘setting the temperature’ in the HE design sector.
The focus is the promotion of positive outcomes of design on building users and exploration of the success of completed built environment projects in use.
Involvement is open to all members with an interest in research, promoting a mixture of representatives from higher education institutions as well as design and construction consultancies.
Our own consumer research with students on ‘Social Learning Environments’ identified student halls as a key part of the student experience, providing study space second only in popularity to the library and a major contributor to student wellbeing.
Planned activities include consumer research with Youth Sight into ‘Student Life’ wellbeing, a survey of student views regarding ‘What is sustainable design and development?’ and an in-depth study of sustainable student residences.
Future projects include High Quality Buildings: performance-in-use and the selection of projects and teams to run the research group’s design toolkit as pilot studies.