Art, Architecture and Design (AAD)

Research project: literature/artefact review

What is a literature/artefact review?
 Literature = scholarly publications (e.g. journal articles, research reports, government
reports or text books) which have been written on a particular topic, theme or idea
 Artefact = a man-made object, typically of historical or cultural significance (e.g.
painting, sculpture, design piece or building structure)
 The review = the careful selection of literature relevant to your topic/artefact and the
presentation, interpretation, classification and evaluation of this literature

Why do a literature/artefact review?

Your literature/artefact review becomes an essential link in your research project:
 The literature/artefact review provides the reader with all the important background
information needed to understand your project
 It places your project as one link in a chain of research that is developing knowledge in
your field
o To understand where you are going, it is important to understand what came
before you
 It demonstrates to the reader that you are aware of up-to-date and important
knowledge on your topic
 It may also be used to justify or provide a rationale for your research question, your
research framework or your methodology

A literature/artefact review is NOT …

 An annotated bibliography
o In an annotated bibliography the writer presents a summary and critical
evaluation of each article, scholarly resource or artefact, one by one
o There is little or no connection made between the various articles or resources

 An essay
o In an essay you are given a topic to discuss or a question to answer and the
writing is organised around responding to that topic or question
o The essay progresses in a linear way, where you present your first point,
followed by an explanation which is supported by the literature
o You then move on to the second point and so on
o In an essay the literature has a supporting role, whereas in a literature review it
is the literature itself which is the subject of discussion

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In the literature/artefact review you will:
 identify a gap in existing knowledge, that is, you will identify what we still need to know
about this topic or issue
 pose a question related to this gap (this will be your research question)
 compare and contrast different authors’ views on an issue
 note areas in which authors are in disagreement
 highlight gaps
 or identify any particular shortcomings of past research
In this way, your literature/artefact review becomes a critical discussion of the knowledge or
ideas related to your research topic.

Structure of the literature/artefact review

The body of your literature/artefact review will be organised in a way that best suits your
topic:
 Historically/chronologically - if you are looking at the evolution of a concept or practice
overtime or evaluating whether a concept from 20 years ago holds up today, then a
historical or chronological organization might be appropriate
 Research questions - some writers organise their literature/artefact review around the
research questions
 Themes - a very common way to organise the literature/artefact review is according to
key themes which emerge from the literature in relation to your topic/artefact

Organising your review

You must demonstrate that you went about your literature/artefact review in a systematic
and rigorous way.

Using a table
You can include diagrams or tables to show how you have organised your literature. In the
example table (Table 1):
 The authors have summarised the various literature on their topic into a table
 They categorised the literature according to land use characteristics discussed in the
literature, such as distance of residence from the urban centre, settlement size and so
on
 They further organised the literature according to different travel patterns such as
distance, frequency, mode, time and energy consumption
 As the authors noted, this table allowed them to
o identify areas the literature has focused on, and any gaps
o examine similarities and differences in the literature
 Further, the table provided a structure for the presentation of the literature review

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 (Stead & Marshall 2001, p. 114)

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 Writing your literature/artefact review

A brief introduction:
 The decision to include a brief introduction to your literature/artefact review will
depend on the topic area, length of the research project, and any instructions or
templates provided by your lecturer
 The length of the introduction will depend on the word requirement for your research
project report or paper (it could be just a couple of sentences or it could be several
paragraphs)
 Set the context and inform the reader of the purpose or focus of the research project
 Sign post to the reader what will be covered
 You may want to also inform the reader of how you went about the process of
conducting the literature review so that the reader can be assured of the rigor of your
process

Sample introduction

Traditionally the approach to infrastructure planning and

Context
set the scene
decision-making is highly directive and strongly organized in
stages. Such an approach can help progress of a project or a
process by defining manageable pieces (Cooper 1972;
Prahabkar 2008). A more overarching approach to lifecycle
Issue / debate
integration, which looks into the possibility and potential added the issue,
value of tailoring and integrating separate initiatives, is debate or
currently absent. To investigate its potential in practice, it is problem relating
crucial to gain insight into recently obtained experiences of to the topic /
artefact
public and private parties with separate integration initiatives.
Purpose Therefore this literature review aims to firstly provide greater
aim of the insight into public and private experiences with various lifecycle
literature/ integration initiatives in practice, and, secondly to explore the
artefact review potential of integrating these initiatives throughout the Scope / outline
planning cycle. Thereby, this review specifically focuses on overview of
experiences with integration initiatives in projects exhibiting a the review
high degree of complexity. The outline is as follows. Firstly the structure
review provides a ….
(section omitted)
(Adapted from Stead & Marshall 2001, p. 114)

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The body sections:
 Lead the reader through your various ideas and understandings
 Have clear sections and subsections to your literature/artefact review
 Ensure that each paragraph has one clear idea
 Use sign posting, transitioning and linking language to connect ideas and to move from
one paragraph to the next

Sample body section

Heading
indicates the focus of this section
2.1 Implications of higher urban density

A large body of research has been dedicated to testing and Topic sentence
exploring the implications of higher urban densities for public tells the reader
transport use, land use efficiency and protection of the green what the focus of
belt, social diversity, social sustainability more broadly as well as the paragraph is
cognitive and experiential factors such as the experience of
privacy. Indeed, two significant studies, Arza Churchman’s
Disentangling the Concept of Density (1999) and Boyko and Development /
Cooper’s Clarifying and Re-conceptualising Density (2011) have support
been dedicated solely to the task of investigating and expands on the
summarising the breadth and variety of research surrounding idea presented in
the subject of urban density in an attempt to reach a more the topic
concise understanding of how density might be used by policy sentence
makers and planning practitioners. These studies provide a
valuable resource for understanding the variety of ways that
density has been thought about and the consequences that Interpretation
have been attributed with it. However, both studies are situated You as the writer
within an environmental-psychology field of study and interpret the
therefore focus primarily on social science research that aims to literature and
test the impact of density ratios on different social and highlight the
significance of the
psychological conditions. They are not particularly useful for
information as it
deciphering the implications of density for the design of the
relates to the topic /
built environment. artefact
(Adapted from Harper 2013, pp. 5-6)

Cohesive language
Used to connect different literature and build discussion
(e.g. ‘Indeed’, ‘These studies’, ‘However’, ‘Therefore’)

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Concluding your literature/artefact review:
 Summarise the main focus of the literature/artefact review
 Highlight the gap in the literature
 Make a connection between your literature/artefact review and your research
questions

Sample conclusion

3.5 Outcomes of the literature review

This review of relevant aspects of the literature points to the
significance of the professional skills already possessed by part-
time students in relation to the development that all
engineering students must undergo in developing from Summary
students to engineers. It sets out the context in which students
may act as mentors for fellow students. It provides confirmation
that composition of groups can have an effect on aspects of
group project work. No close equivalents of the initiatives
involving part-time students carried out at Coventry have been Gap in literature
found in the literature and this confirms the validity and
interest of the research questions posed for this investigation:
 How do the full-time students learn from part-time
Link to research questions
students?
 What are the benefits and problems in creating this
contact?

(Davies & Rutherford 2012, p. 358-359)

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 Artefact review

Edouard Manet’s 1882 painting A Bar at the

Folies-Bergère (Courtald Gallery, London)

Sample paragraph
Pointing to the impact of the invention of photography in the 19 th Topic sentence
century, the authors use the photographic notion of the ‘snapshot’ to tells the reader
explain the ways in which multiple temporalities are simultaneously the focus is on
juxtaposed in the Bar, thus preserving the ‘optical logic’ of the scene: the notion of
If one presumes that the laws of optics apply, it is far ‘snapshot’
more economical to make the temporal hypothesis: the
painting condenses two distinct moments or phases of
representation – two snapshots, if you will – between
which certain things and figures have changed places (de
Development
Duve & Holmes 1998, p. 146).
explains the
They argue that the temporal gap between the two ‘snapshots’ is
Support author’s
registered in the changed position of objects and the figures. In short, arguments and
uses quotes
the authors argue for ‘one viewpoint, two moments’ (de Duve & extends ideas
from de Duve
Holmes 1998, p. 148). Therefore, in this painting there is an further
and Holmes
as support unresolved tension between unity and fragmentation of perspective
because, as De Duve and Holmes conclude:
It is the same man who addresses the barmaid from an
angle and whom the barmaid addresses face-to-face, but
it is not the same man at the same time. Only his Interpretation
reflection establishes the equation between two analyses the argument
moments. By masking the movement of the mirror, presented by de Duve
Manet obliterates the irreducible interval of time that and Holmes
separates the man in the top hat from himself, in his two
successive positions. This temporal gap […] can never be
filled by a spatial identification […] (de Duve & Holmes
1998, p. 164).
This would also account for the altered positions of the bottles on the
bar, indicative of changes taking place in the course of the barmaid’s
serving of customers. The ‘snap shots’ are separated by the pictorial Conclusive statement
field of the mirror itself.

(Adapted from Merritt 2014, pp. 10-11)

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References

Davies, JW & Rutherford, U 2012, ‘Learning from fellow engineering students who have
current professional experience’, European Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 37, no. 4,
pp. 354-365.

Harper, C 2013, ‘Compaction, scale and proximity: An investigation into the spatial
implications of density for the design of new urban housing’, PhD Thesis, University of
Westminster, London, viewed 22 March 2016,
<http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/14373/1/Claire_HARPER_2013.pdf >.

Merritt, N 2014, ‘Jeff Wall: reading pictures’, PhD thesis, University of Melbourne,
Melbourne.

Stead, D & Marshall, S 2001, ‘The relationships between urban form and travel patterns. An
international review and evaluation’, European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure
Research, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 113-141.

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