Berit Ann Roos gives seminar about conducting PhD research on a self-designed building

An architect’s research on a self-designed building: residential care facility for residents showing challenging behaviour. A seminar by Research[x]Designer Berit Ann Roos

As an architect Berit Ann Roos has designed a very intensive care (VIC) residential facility for intellectually impaired individuals showing challenging behavior. The design of the facility intended to improve their quality of life (QoL) and took many needs and wishes of users into account. The resulting building was reported to be a best practice case, allegedly shown in a reduction of incidents involving residents and an improvement of their QoL. But was this in fact true? Berit Ann’s PhD research started out of curiosity, to better understand the interrelatedness of spatial factors with the life of residents. Firstly, she conducted a scoping review to understand how architecture can contribute to the QoL of individuals with these conditions. With these results in mind, she used her own design of the VIC as a case study to learn how space, people, and activities interact. The case study was based on fieldwork and routinely collected data combined with member checking, the latter seems to be a valuable approach to conduct research on the resident-space interaction without interfering with the residents’ daily lives. Findings showed that despite initial positive reports, there is still much that can be learned and improved. This seminar aims to discuss these lessons learned and to reflect on possibilities to use the findings and method more broadly: to advance the architectural profession with an architect’s self-scrutiny of a critically acclaimed building for impaired individuals.

Date 26/10/2022 – 12-13.30

Location: Arenbergkasteel, Heverlee, room R.AE.KAST.Fumoir.432-01.00.06 and online. Participants who want to participate online, please sign up by sending an email to Berit Ann Roos or Ann Heylighen