Abstract:

The scope of the paper is the presentation of the research projects in the field of architecture conducted at the Faculty of XY over the last 20 years. Architecture is a practical field of knowledge, placed at the point where technical, social and art sciences converge. Nowadays there are two fundamental directions of research development in architecture: 1) the historical researches connected with the humanistic reflection on artistic development, 2) analyses of the built environment with the purpose of the improvement of designing processes. The first group of researches has a long history, ranging from the antiquity. Whereas analyses of the built environment have been intensively developed since the second half of the twentieth century as the multidisciplinary environmental studies.

The Faculty of XY, especially the Department of XY has been involved in quality analyses of the built environment since the nineties of the twentieth century. The researches were aimed at the improvement of a functional programming of buildings and urban complexes. They were conducted as: 1) research studies obligatory to Polish tertiary schools’ scientific workers (statutory researches), 2) grants from the Committee of Science Research, Ministry of Science, 3) D.Sc. and Ph.D. research projects resulting in dissertations, 4) consulting contracts, 5) students’ works within the subject curriculum of “Facility Management in Architecture - Design Strategies” and “Commercial Buildings Design”. In the course of research projects within the subject “Facility Management in Architecture - Design Strategies” students learn the methods of data collection, prepare questionnaires and surveys for users, conduct interviews. In the next step students classify and analyse the data. Results of researches are prepared in the form of graphic multimedia presentations. Other subjects such as “Commercial Buildings Design” include quality analyses of the existing buildings.

The Faculty of XY focuses its research schemes on theoretical issues – the build of architectural form and development issues: quality analyses of built environment, functional programming in architecture, energy-efficiency in architecture and urban planning. The interests of scientific workers are focused mainly on office buildings and spaces, schools, universities, medical care and social care institutions. One of the latest research projects is the XY architects-sociologists sub-project, devoted to the housing environment of elderly people in Poland. The energy-efficiency issues are developed within a framework of XY Consortium. The research schemes development is an interdisciplinary process, engaging, beside architects, psychologists, sociologists, technical specialists in the design and construction of buildings.
This paper includes examples of case studies and mentioned research tasks.

Keywords:

Building quality assessment, building quality evaluation, functional programming in architecture, Facility Management, POE – Post-Occupancy Evaluation.