What is the aim of a dissertation?
I was flipping through the past dissertations in school and realized tat most are trying to prove a hypothesis. Understandably, none concluded that the hypothesis is false.
What happens if it is? Is there a need to tweak the content so that it supports the hypothesis or vice versa?
Anyway that’s just a thought, a bigger question I have is is there a need for a hypothesis at all?
Im doing a technical dissertation on basement vents. Get knowledge from old knowledge, im trying to compile various design strategies of vents from around Singapore, analyze pros and cons to find out under what design strategies suit what kind of situations (integrate with wall or floor, express or hide, single function or double up as signage, street furniture etc). Almost writing a “Basement vents for dummies”. There’s an objective to raise awareness to the issue that these huge vents must be taken care of or else they’ll become giant eyesores; there’ll be new knowledge in linking vent design with various site contexts; but there’s no hypothesis (or is there?)
I’m very unsure of my topic, it currently lacks excitement, and novelty. But i also duno if these qualities are important in a dissertation.
5 comments:
haha james' virgin post...
(this question begs various answers of differing angles. i'll attempt round-one of unravelling this topic, but at 6 in the morning, i doubt i'm going to be very effective. feel free to poke holes and i'll try to patch things up.)
first off, NUS presents its professional degree as an MArch. by that concept, the school is required--not by law, but by scholastic standards--to uphold certain amounts of rigour in its graduands. and by 'rigour', i refer to a more scholarly concept that asks of its players to rise above the mere technicalities and basal motivations of any subject, take a step back, and present a nuanced and reflected stance that weighs both the pros and cons of a question. the requirement that all its MArch enrollers part-take in a dissertation is therefore a means of ensuring this rigour.
secondly, i guess it might interest you in understanding the 'genealogy' of our current practise of scholarly research. more close at hand, how 'academic writing' has developed over the years to this structure of thesis-evidence-reflection-antithesis-motivation essay. go back a mere century away and you will not encounter the same sort of writing in the archives. much of what we do today in academic writing is both a cause and effect of how fast the knowledge bank of this world is expanding. and it will, and must continue to expand because the human aspiration gears towards not only leading a better life, but a longer life. the need for a hypothesis is a need to say that you have a piece of information that might/ will add to this aspiration; the need for a hypothesis means going up in arms and demanding yourself to be heard because you do have that point to make.
i think it's a common misconception that researchers have to reduce to trickery to push their arguments (i.e. "tweak the content so that it supports the hypothesis"). a really good argument is one that presents both sides of an idea truthfully, however asserting with reason that one side is more important. our job is to present that reason.
don't ever think that your reason, hypothesis or any idea in general is boring. often, mankind's greatest of inventions pertain to the most mundane aspects of our lives. after all, how many of us can survive the day-to-day on the knowledge of rocket science? (no offence to rocket scientists.)
i realise i come off as being horribly oblique, but i hope you can get something out of it with meditation.
hopefully not the conclusion that i'm utter rubbish, of course. :)
hmm i think there's great potential to write abt this cause u are dealing with the AESTHETIC and critical-functional expression of basement vents.
if u are too consumed into what everyone else thinks of u eventually u will produce a substandard work that is already self censored into what u-think-wat-everyone-feels-is-boring.
i was telling james hor, there are some air vents articulation in melbourne docklands (and prob even in the new melbourne council hse) that u guys over there cld help him check it out.
maybe will share ard my dissertation crap one day when i am free. currently dun even have time to sleep helping prof heng render movies.
thanks.
"how many of us can survive the day-to-day on the knowledge of rocket science?" is very inspiring.
while basement vents are a banality and not sthg which everyone hopes to design, they will eventually come out of the ground and being a visual element which could potentially compliment or kill the visual quality of the main building and it's surroundings, on top of the spatial quality of the basement space.
and they are huge.
so i guess the challenge here is to uncover the architectural potential of this element. to let people know that it is important to take care of them. to show how they can be made such that they exist in harmony with the surroundings. to open up minds to see this element as a an opportunity rather than just another piece of M&E for the engineers to design in calculator style.
im thinking there's still the lack of a hypothesis here. what ive done so far is just walk ard the island and surf web looking for how vents are being expressed, or integrated. compile them, critique their suitabilty - personal and user feedbacks - and try to do a 'basement vent for dummies' which cld be useful for the practice.
my tutor Che ah K o k M ing said the issue this paper is not really trying to find out the correctness of a hypothesis, but to address the issue of the lack of knowledge in this field. so this compilation in itself is new knowledge.
hope this post will go on for the next few months. pls feel free to say anything. and if YOU see any interesting vent shafts, pls let me know and if can take a few pics! it'll come helpful to u too someday esp in congested singapore where the buildings either grow up or down.
by the way, basement vents look like this:
simlim square: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/v698/cindela/blog/Sim_Lim_Square001.jpg
these are expressed vents. u can the robotic version at eastpoint mall at simei.
they could also be integrated onto a wall or the floor, these are hard to find. if u see nice grilles or openings along a wall or floor, just post here and i'll go there. wrong also never mind, just post.
j u s t p o s t.
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