Investigating wasted space: an analytic perspective (original) (raw)

Studies on environmental psychology include both indoor and outdoor settings. The environment works as an opportunity for emerging human behaviour and emotions. Physical attributes of the environment may affect space meaning and arouse senses. A space is called high, spacious, and preferred because it is attached to such a general rating. On the contrary, one may recall a space as unpreferred, unsafe, complex, and so on. Research has often investigated desirable qualities of environments, but study on disliked environmental attributes is also important, especially when economical components are influential. Since land prices and construction costs are increasing, communities should consider reducing useless spaces. Looking through research, adequate study of “wasted space” was not found. For an exploratory study of “wasted space” and attributes affecting it, 25 apartments were evaluated. These were selected from 55 cases in a high-dense district in Tehran-Iran. Then, a semi structural interview with 30 residents (men, women, parents and children, owners and tenants from 18 to70 years old) was conducted. Each interviewee was asked to define “wasted space,” indicate spaces they saw as “wasted”, explain why they called them as “wasted” and discus their attempts for reusing them. Using the same questionnaire, a group of 10 designers and design professions from Shahid Beheshti University evaluated the same apartments. They also were asked to determine places where they call as wasted space during teaching. Considering different aspects of space (physical, perceived, cognitive, and behavioural) and different features of each, with coded keywords extracted from interviews, research found that: