Bibliometric analysis of water at the intersection of environmental psychology and biophilic design

Water is the subject of study in many scientific fields. The relationship between water and space in architecture is connected with environmental psychology and biophilic design. Therefore, this study seeks to explore the research related to water at the intersection of environmental psychology and biophilic design, to identify current research gaps and primary authors and concepts. The method applied herein is biblio-metric analysis with the science mapping technique, covering the documents held on Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection databases. The keywords environmental psychology, biophilic design, and water are selected for the systematically analysed scan performed in Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection databases. After collecting the bibliometric data of a total of 292 documents from the databases on 1 May 2022, the downloaded .csv and .txt data files were transferred to VOSviewer (1.6.18.0). Firstly, descriptive data was examined on the Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection databases. Secondly, visualizations were created via the science mapping techniques by VOSviewer. The selected bibliometric analysis with science mapping techniques represents co-authorship data by the authors, co-occurrences data by author keywords, citation data by documents, co-citation data by the cited references, and co-citation data by the cited authors. As a result, twelve primary authors and five concepts have been identified. The concepts for the gaps are biophilic design, biophilia, emotional design, perception, and architectural design. The critical result is that in the approach to the relationship between space and water in architecture, biophilic design has been found to be a more recent field than environmental psychology. So, the concepts ascertained in this study – and especially the newly established combinations with the biophilic architecture– are going to have a growing tendency in architecture.