The Nonvisual Legibility and the Coherence of Space: A New Theoretical Framework with Examples of Its Implementation in Empirical Research (original) (raw)
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1985
This study is on development of a method for investigating the relationship between the legibility in the urban environment and various components of the visual environment, as percieved, and remembered by the people. The focus of the study are small urban spaces in Boston. The study developed a series of experimental protocols to study the response of the people to the various squares, around Boston. The emphasis of the study being to explore the possible approaches to collecting information related to perception of the urban environment. The phenomena of perception relating to small urban spaces, was discussed within the framework of theories in cognitive psychology. The study proposes that people are able to discriminate and distinguish squares based on the salient qualities, but are unable to distinguish between the various expectant elements such as window types, street lights and benches. The absence of salient qualities in small spaces, make them illegible. The role of schema...
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The paper intends to analyse the common ground between the field of visual perception and architectural design. The architectural product always addresses an user, who will react in a certain way towards the architectural object, towards built space, towards her/his environment in general. This relationship is bidirectional and its effects are visible both ways: we modify the environment through the designing process (architecture, urban planning, design in general) and the (built) environment modifies our behaviour. In this context, it is crucial that we understand the functioning mechanisms of the perceptual processes - which will be detailed throughout the first part of the paper. Perception is indeed a very complex process, that involves gathering information through our senses; processing it - which implies analysing the received information and comparing it against previously gathered knowledge, based on past experiences -; and formulating particular responses - also based on previous experiences. Perception is in essence a highly creative process: although we relate to the same reality, we will perceive it in a different way according to what that environment means to each of us. The second part of the paper will study several parallel theories on perception developed by architects, urban planners and psychologists. We will also pay special attention to several conclusions reached by Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder upon the way in which perception develops from an early age. These studies are essential in establishing a growth and progression pattern throughout childhood, relating it to the different stages of the development process of space perception. Finally, the third part will present two case studies focusing on the manner in which users, with different cultural backgrounds, perceive the space they inhabit and, another two case studies, which show how and why users change their environment - cases in which the designer failed to produce spaces with meaning according to the users’ paradigm.
For an ecological approach to architecture : perception and design
conference proceedings on Ambiance Nantes, 2003
Theme of the workshop : theory on architectural and urban ambience, reference and referenciation Several works of research that we have conducted in our laboratory (CRESSON) have aimed at understanding the ambient milieu (among which sonic and optic environment) through one's experience. These works encourage us to consider an "ecological approach to architecture" which takes into account human, sensitive and social experience in situ. This approach is useful for a qualitative design of ambient environment in a sensitive and cultural way. It aims at identifying different types of referential situations through potential « formers » (« formants » in french) that characterise them and find their origin in perceptual ordinary experience. Standing close to what implies an architectural projection of space and built form, it could modify the cognitive attitude in design relatively to ambience. This approach gives importance to potentials of perception and action that an environment can afford to users and questions the criterias on which we can do specific physical measurments on qualitative dimensions. But it also questions the aesthetic criterias that are involved by active uses and the embodiement of « references » that guide architectural thinking. In a large definition, ecology is a multidisciplinary approach to the study of living systems, their environment, and the reciprocity that has evolved between the two. It leads to distinguish physical reality from a perceptual reality. Our analysis focuses on the active relation we can have when practicising the built structures and using its environmental potentials. Walking, sitting, talking, all our practices of architecture awake and use perceived ambient factors like sound, light and heat. Although many works show links between architectural spaces and social uses and teach us some important facts, the role of ambient factors is not clearly taken into account. Many works about environment psychology tend to define criterias based on assessment (good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, etc.) and effects on behaviors. Our approach does not aim at showing the effects of environment on judgments or behaviors (in that respect, it is not behaviorist). Rather we try to show the modalities by which the reciprocity between man and environment is experienced in different architectural forms in order to inflect projectual thinking. We are interested in following the questions :-how is perceived and structured an ambient environment, and how does it involve our action in every day life ?-how could knowledge on this issue inflect architectural and urban principles of conception and their references ?
Subjective and objective dimensions of spatial legibility
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences Journal
Abstract Reading space means understanding, analyzing or evaluating a certain space. Yet spatial legibility differs from the concept of reading. Legibility is one of the principles of urban design. Legibility means the possibility of organizing an environment within an imageable and coherent pattern. Reading an environment is a process that evolves with the obtaining of spatial information from the environment and by mentally processing that information and using it in a way appropriate to its purpose. Two components play a part in the process of obtaining spatial information: the characteristics of the space and the characteristics of the observer. The observer's perception and understanding of the characteristics of a space occurs as a result of spatialpsychological processes that happen in the mind. At the same time, legibility is influenced by spatial characteristics. The degree of legibility of a space depends on the plan layout in the second dimension and its complexity, and on the aliency of architectural components in the third dimension. There are many concepts in the literature that define legible environments: simple, coherent, understandable, perceivable, etc. All of these concepts point to characteristics deriving from the structure of the space. However, it is impossible to measure legibility by these concepts. It is discussed in this article that there are two main variables to devise a definition based on characteristics deriving from space: 1. the complexity of spatial layout and 2. the saliency of landmarks. The complexity of spatial layout describes the two-dimensional information about a space, while the saliency of landmarks refers to the three-dimensional information about a space. These two variables are also the elements of spatial information used while employing wayfinding behavior. Keywords: Spatial Perception; Spatial Legibility; Urban Form; Human Mind; Landmarks
2006
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Journal of Urban Design, 2001
Urban designers, perceiving the city mainly as a morphological phenomenon, are primarily concerned with the sensory, and particularly with the visual, qualities of urban space. This view of the city as a spatial physical structure requires abstraction, to enable comprehension of the complexity and continuity of the urban space, its transparency and its indeterminacy. However, this abstraction often fails to take into account the properties of the city as a place of habitation, ignoring the sociocultural speci® cities of its different users. The paper attempts to take urban design beyond this abstraction, which is so indifferent to the human element, towards a more concrete and speci® c approach. It calls for a shift in the rather theoretical postmodern interest in the urban space, important though it is in its morphological inclusiveness, to embody a pluralistic subjective perception of the space and its use, bearing in mind fundamental relationships between space and social processes. most important concept is`type', which attempts to interpret and thus to restructure urban elements which recall and transcend culture and history . investigation of urban space types is just such an attempt to understand the spatial elements composing the city. It is based on a formal± morphological approach, and, although drawing upon real places, it fails to account for their properties as ª fundamental types of habitatº (Delevoy, 1978, p. 20), thus ignoring their utilitarian aspects, as well as their sociocultural contexts. Associated with the neo-rationalists, who sought to achieve urbanism by reconceiving the architectural object , this kind of investigation tries to build an autonomous architectural discourse of the urban space, separated from social, political or economic discussion. Denying the modernist association between form and function , this investigation of the city is based solely on its architecture . It is thus concerned with the physical aspects of the urban environment, focusing on its abstract morphological qualities. These qualities are perceived as being detached from urban use and appropriation as they would be discussed, for example, by Jacobs , , who regard the city primarily as a place of human habitation. 1 As pointed out by , this kind of architectural discourse seldom considers the way the space is actually used, by ignoring its everyday reality. It has often preferred ª the seduction and power of the work of Foucault and Derridaº , 2 leaving unexplored the links between space and power, as suggested for example by the notion of the`everyday life' developed by Lefebvre (1971) and . 3 Needless to say, concentrating on the abstract concept of the spatial experience rather than on concrete day-to-day life has ignored the users and their functional, social and emotional needs. Thus, although the city is examined and designed on the implicit premise of human experience, this experience is never discussed or considered speci® cally enough to make a difference. We seldom know who the people populating the space are, why they are there and what they are doing. We never see their faces or hear their voices. As a result of working under the assumption that the user of the urban space is ungendered, ageless and declassi® ed, the urban space produced is often undifferentiated and neutral.
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