Holistic Spatial Design

Functional tool-sets as repositories of people-centered spatial design principles

Inquiry & Research Intensive 2
Wednesday, May 29, 2013 8:30 AM
Omni Providence Hotel (formerly The Westin) in Providence, Rhode Island


Holistic spatial design is an interdisciplinary endeavor and paradigm consisting of the fields of architecture, cognitive science, spatial cognition driven design computing, and evidence-based analytical techniques in environmental and social psychology.

Holistic spatial design aims to initiate a broad-based discussion on creating an overarching framework for the generation, persistence, and application of human-centered spatial design principles, procedures, methods, and practical tool-sets that are usable at all levels and stages of design education and training, academic design discourse and design studies, and the professional practice of spatial design for architecture. An early focus area of the holistic paradigm is to develop an all-encompassing framework for unifying core aspects pertaining to "universal access and usability, individual-being, structure, function & purpose, and sustainability" for the design of the built environment.

This pre-conference research intensive will present an overarching view of recent community initiatives, and other scientific deliverables (e.g., systems, case-studies, experiments) focusing on aspects of (architectural) spatial cognition, cognitive design computing, and evidence-based analyses that relate to processes of assistive design tools and frameworks, and their impact on real-world Professional Design Practice, and Design Learning and Education.



Session Convener:
Mehul Bhatt
bhatt@informatik.uni-bremen.de





Speakers




Mehul Bhatt

Mehul Bhatt
Spatial Cognition Research Center (SFB/TR 8)
University of Bremen, Germany

No Picture

Christoph Hölscher
ETH
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich,
Switzerland

Rodrigo Mora

Rodrigo Mora Vega
School of Architecture FAAD
Universidad Diego Portales
Santiago, Chile

Carl Schultz

Carl Schultz
Spatial Cognition Research Center (SFB/TR 8)
University of Bremen, Germany

Frank Dylla

Frank Dylla
Spatial Cognition Research Center (SFB/TR 8)
University of Bremen, Germany




Mehul Bhatt

Mehul Bhatt

People-Centered Architecture Design Assistance Systems


Contemporary architecture design tools regard eventual design products as isolated "frozen moments of perfection". Even within state-of-the-art design tools, aspects such as commonsense, semantics, structure, function, behavior, people-centered design concepts that are implicitly known to designers are yet to come to the fore. In our ongoing research activities in the field of spatial cognition for architecture design, we are developing the cognitively driven foundational spatial informatics for user-centered architecture design systems. The talk will demonstrate a human-centered model of abstraction, modeling, and computing for function-driven architecture design (assistance) systems. The aim is to identify how interdisciplinary application of knowledge may provide real benefit for the theory and professional practice of architecture design, and eventually, tangible benefit for the quality of everyday personal life and work.

University of Bremen,  Germany. www




Large-Scale Experiments of User Experience in Built-Up Public Environments


Since its initial formulation as a theory (Benedikt 1979), isovist analysis has been employed by many researchers from all over the world as a method to characterize the visual experience of people in the environment. Werner & Franz (2007), for example, have shown that qualitative assessments of rooms are related with isovist properties, whereas Kalff et al (2011) have shown that navigational strategies are to great extent, shaped by isovist characteristics. With the aim to further expand these ideas, this talk seeks to study new approaches linking the relation between human spatial behavior and visual properties.

Rodrigo Mora

Rodrigo Mora


School of Architecture FAAD,  Chile. www




Christoph Hoelscher

Christoph Hölscher

Empirical and Analytic Techniques to Investigate Human Behaviour in Buildings


Understanding how humans react to buildings, for example how they move through it to find their way, is a key aspect for taking a user-centered perspective. Psychology and cognitive science can provide valuable input to an emerging evidence-based movement in architecture. We strongly believe that cognitive science researchers can make important contributions to an evidence-based design approach, and we exemplify this in the area of wayfinding in complex public buildings. I hope to discuss how cognitive science research can gain a more prominent role in architectural design and how digital tools can contribute to a design approach that is geared toward building usability.

ETH,  Switzerland. www




Deriving Formal Knowledge from Evidence-Based User Behavior Data

People-centered evidence-based analysis of the interaction between people and the built-environment has been a crucial concern for many focus groups and endeavors within the scope of the research areas covered by the Environmental Design Research Association. Cross-domain studies led by environmental psychologists on user experience and behavior are abound. However, general-purpose open-source tools and standards for user behavior and experience data collection, sharing, qualitative analysis and communication of analytical results and their use within technical design systems are missing in the community. We report on the ongoing development of prototypical systems specifically for conducting large-scale people experiments for understanding user wayfinding behavior in the built environment. We especially focus on the manner in which analytical knowledge may be translated to formal specifications that can be applied within other kinds of design simulation systems.

Carl Schultz

Carl Schultz



University of Bremen,  Germany. www




Frank Dylla

Frank Dylla

Predictive Pedestrian Simulation, driven by Qualitative Behavioral Knowledge


Evidence based design methods aim to collect and analyze information about user / pedestrian behavior in a given domain (e.g., hospitals, airports) of interest. Analyzing this data gives valuable insights on how people behave in certain situations and environments. Nevertheless, whether the behavior shown can be improved regarding different groups and environmental designs, e.g. productivity in case of staff or well-being in case of patients, is hard to evaluate. In order to investigate the influence of certain behaviors in connection with the environment, we need formal models of the behaviors, and their application within simulation systems. We developed a method to represent pedestrian behavior on an abstracted formal level. We are not only able to generate models from observations, but also from natural language descriptions in a straight-forward manner. Taking these rules we are able to simulate pedestrian behavior. Rules can be added, deleted, or adapted in order to observe the overall performance, i.e. on the one hand the influence of the environment on the behavior shown and also the impact of individual (pedestrian) behavior on the environment, for example, the flow rate. Furthermore, we are able to extract problematic behavior on a formal level. These insights from the formal investigations as well the simulations may be used to redesign buildings or to train staff to show better behavior.

University of Bremen,  Germany. www







Venue: edra44providence




http://www.edra.org/content/edra44providence

EDRA44Providence, May 29 - June 1.
Omni Providence Hotel (formerly The Westin) in Providence, Rhode Island


EDRA44 has a special focus on health policy implications for environmental design in addition to promoting the value of research for advancing environmental design and theory building. The 2013 conference is co-sponsored by the Rhode Island Department of Health and together we invite EDRA44 participants to con­tribute to developing health policy through environmental design research.


About EDRA


The Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) is an international, interdisciplinary organization founded in 1968 by design professionals, social scientists, students, educators, and facility managers. The purpose of EDRA is the advancement and dissemination of environmental design research, thereby improving understanding of the interrelationships between people, their built and natural surroundings, and helping to create environments responsive to human needs. EDRA celebrates more than 40 years of research-based innovations for all built and natural environments. EDRA's roots are strong and flourishing. Our organization's vibrant network of visionaries have anticipated movements in research and design decades before they have hit the mainstream. EDRA's lineage of members have pioneered environment and behavior studies, evidence-based design, facility evaluation methods, sustainability, active living community planning, universal design, diversity in design, workplace design and informatics, and digital technologies.



Source: http://www.edra.org/content/about-edra





Related Initiatives



Project DesignSpace

Assistive Intelligence for Spatial Design


Project DesignSpace develops computational systems that are used as a basis of providing assistive design intelligence within a conventional spatial and architectural design workflow.

Project Designspace

Design Semantics

Ontologies, Inference, and Standards for Spatial Design


In this special interest group, we aim to establish working-groups, and standardisation and dissemination initiatives within the foundational framework of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA).

http://www.designsemantics.org