responsive environments

Responsive Environments

Responsive environments

• The design of the environment can greatly affect the choices people make at different levels. It affects where people can go, the range of uses available, the understanding of these choices, the degree to which people can use different spaces of choice, and so on. Thus, the design of environments where people go, work, and interact with each other must be responsive.

Responsive environments

• Places that provide their users with an essentially demo cratic setting, enriching their opportunities by maximizing the degree of choice available to them.

• The concept of responsive environments focuses on what features make an environment responsive to the needs of its users .

Ian Bentley and his colleagues have developed a set of guidelines which they claim make an environment responsive to the needs of its users. They do this using the following concepts:

PermeabilityVariety

LegibilityRobustness

Visual appropriatenessRichness

Personalization

permeability

Permeability ₪the property of how easy it is to move

through an environment and depends heavily upon the paths and objects placed within the space

₪relates to the way that a design affects where people can go and cannot go within a city district

“The urban designer must always consider permeability first because it involves pedestrian and vehicle circulation within

the city district as a whole. The greater the number of alternative routes through an environ ment, the greater

people's freedom of movement and, therefore, the greater the responsiveness of that place.”

• Places must be accessible to people to offer them choice.

• Public and private access must be complimentary.

• Physical and visual permeability depends on how the network of public space divides the environment into blocks.

• There is a decline in public permeability because of current design trends:

scale of development; hierarchal layout; and segregation.

Examples

Qualities of Responsive

Environments

Permeability; Variety; legibility; Robustness; Visual appropriateness; Richness; Personalisation


Environments


Provision of paths/streets and its effective layout promote good permeability.


Environments



Environments


This type of building design does not allow much permeability in which case accessibility is not easy and so may cause the people to feel lazy or not encourage the people to browse the area.

Variety

Variety ₪refers to the range of uses that a place

provides (e.g. housing, shop ping, employ ment, recreation, and so forth)

₪refers to the range of activities, people and building forms which can be found in a space

The varied nature of people, forms and activities will create a range of meanings and in turn the meanings may influence the variety of options available. Easily accessible places are of little use if their choice of experiences is limited.

“The aim is to maximize the variety of uses for a given project by, first, demon strating how one can assess the level of demands for various uses and, then, determining the widest mix of uses feasible economically and func tionally.”

• Variety offers users a choice of experiences.

• Variety of experience implies places with varied forms, uses, and meanings.

• Unfortunately, developers and planners are more concerned with economic performance and easier management than with variety.

• Variety depends on 3 main factors: range of activities- demand;

possibility of supplying affordable space; extent to which design encourages positive interactions.

• it also depends on feasibility: economic, political, and functional

Examples


Environments


Mixed-use buildings and blocks are a good example of places that offer

variety.


Environments


Business and commercial centres also offer a choice of uses and experiences to people.


Environments


The Avenue des Champs-Elysees, one of the most famous streets in the world is a place where many things come together. Retail stores and shops, dining and drinking establishments, offices, residential and hotel buildings, etc., line the 1.9 km-long avenue. The avenue also serves as the venue for many important celebrations in Paris.


Environments


The Bonifacio High Street in Taguig offer a variety of experiences to the people from shopping, dinking

and dining, recreation, living, business, and others.


Environments


Malls are one of the most common public spaces that offer a variety of uses and activities to people. Malls also help establish adjacent spaces and buildings outside it that further adds to the variety of uses the area is capable of offering.

Legibility

Legibility

₪is how easy it is for a person to construct a mental map of their environment and depends to a large extent to the form of the environment and the activities people undertake

₪relates to the ease with which people can understand the spatial layout of a place

“The designer should determine and en hance the perceptual clarity of the paths, landmarks, bound aries, and so forth that have emerged through the consideration of permeability and variety.”

• Degree of choice depends on how legible it is; how layout is understood

• Legibility is important at two levels; physical form and activity patterns

• Legibility In the old days- important buildings stood out

• legibility of form and use is reduced In the modern environment

• Separating pedestrians from vehicles also reduces legibility

• Legibility is strengthened by Lynch’s physical elements of the city

Examples


Environments


The layout of the city can be easily understood and important buildings stand out and serves as a landmark.

Barcelona, Spain.


Environments


In the older days, important public buildings were more legible than private buildings. Cologne, Germany.


Environments


Nodes also help establish a good

legibility of spaces.


Environments


The use of cul de sacs to define edges also help with the legibility of places.


Environments


Landmarks, one of the most easily remembered features of a place help a lot for the easy familiarization of the road configuration and layout.

Robustness

Robustness ₪describes buildings and outdoor

spaces - the design of which does not limit users to a single fixed use but, rather, supports many different purposes and activities

₪Environments which can be used for many different purposes

“To design for robustness is to make spatial and constructional organization suitable for the widest possible range of likely activities and future uses, both in the short and long term”

• explores how a single space can be put to multiple uses

• There must be a distinction between large scale and small scale robustness.

• There are 3 key factors that support long term robustness:

building depth; access; and building height.

• The design of small scale robustness depends on extra factors:

hard and soft areasactive and passive areas

Examples


Environments


Bedford Square, London. Used to be mostly residential apartments and now

also contain offices and embassies. It also used to house a School. An example

of large scale robustness.


Environments


Function room, an example of small scale robustness. It can serve for a variety of purposes, e.g. venues for talking engagements and seminars, wedding receptions, culminating programs, parties, and others.


Environments


Studio type apartment.


Environments


Robustness can be achieved by making ground floor areas abutting public outdoor space occupied by active areas.


Environments


In busy vehicular streets, robustness can be achieved by allowing a zone for amenities such as street trees, seating, bus shelters,

telephone kiosks and cycle racks between the movement zone and the vehicular space.


Environments


Large public open spaces like town squares can be robust. Plaza Mayor, Madrid, Spain.

Visual appropriateness

Visual Appropriateness

₪the way in which the design physically can make people aware of the choices the place provides

₪how the provision of cues can support variety, robustness and legibility

A city hall should look like a govern mental building or that a row of walk-up flats should look like homes.

• Decisions already made determine the general appearance of the scheme- next focus is on details

• visual appropriateness focuses on details

• Visual appropriateness is concerned with designing the external image of a place

• Regardless of what designers want, people interpret places as having meanings.

• A vocabulary of visual cues must be found to communicate levels of choice.

• Interpretations can reinforce responsiveness by:

supporting the place’s legibilitysupporting the place’s varietysupporting the place’s robustness

• It is vital if people are to correctly interpret how to make appropriate use of an environment.

• Poor visual appropriateness are when buildings are identical in colour and appearance making it difficult to differentiate them.

Examples


Environments


Hospitals. Picture to the left looks more like an office building while the picture to right looks more institutional.


Environments


Churches. Old churches are easily recognizable because of its distinguished physical characteristics. Modern churches are hardly recognizable because of its design that hardly differ from any other modern building.

UNO-City Church by architect Heinz Tesar, Vienna


Environments


Government buildings, for the power it hold, should look dignified and authoritative. The building on top looks more dignified and authoritative than that of the picture at the bottom.


Environments


Condominiumbuilding

Office building

The two buildings with different types of occupancy almost look the same. The popularly followed modern look of buildings makes it hard to tell what a particular building serves for.


Environments


Condominiumbuilding

Office building

Between the two images, it is more obvious that the image on the right are residential homes than that of

the image on the left.

richness

Richness

₪relates to the range of sensory experiences available, for example sight, smell, touch and sound

₪Is the variety of sense experiences that users can enjoy

₪concerned with how the experience can have an effect on the emotional state of those visiting the place

• Decisions about appearances already discussed still leave room for manoeuvring the most detailed level of design.

• There are two ways for users to choose from different sense of experiences:o Focusing their attention on different

sources of sense of experience on different occasions

oMoving away from one source to another

• The sense of motion - gained through movement

• sense of smell - can not be directed

• sense of hearing – user has limited control

• sense of touch – voluntary and involuntary

• sense of sight – most dominant in terms of information input and is the easiest to control.

• The basis of visual richness depends on the presence of visual contrasts .

Examples


Environments


Sense of smell A large herb garden. The beds are filled with highly scented plants, whose aroma is concentrated within the wind-free space. In urban places, the potential of cafes, bakeries and the like open to the outside can be sources of rich smells along the area.


Environments


Sense of motion The Centre Pompidou, by Piano and Rogers, uses escalators to provide a variety of movement sensations; experienced in relationship both to close-up parts of the building itself, and to distant city views’.


Environments


Portland Square, by Lawrence Halprin, uses water to provide a rich range of tactile experiences.


Environments


The picture to the left offers visual richness than the picture to the left which looks monotonous due

to its uniform design and character.


Environments


Beautiful landscapes around/before buildings provides visual contrast through the placement of softscapes before/around large solid masses (buildings)


Environments


Visual contrasts which creates richness can be achieved by differences of colour or tone on a two-dimensional surface.


Environments


Personalization

Personalization

₪ability we are given to customise an environment on a large or small scale

₪refers to designs that encourage people to put their own mark on the places where they live and work

Personalization allows people to achieve an environment that bears the stamp of their own tastes and values.

• Allows people to achieve an environment that bears the stamp of their own tastes and values.

• Personalization makes a person’s pattern of activities more clear.

• Small scale personalisation can include moving a chair in a room, large scale personalisation being the ability to change the appearance of a building.

• Users personalize in two ways;to improve practical facilities

to change the image of a place

• Users personalize as an affirmation of their own tastes and values and because they perceive existing image as inappropriate.

• Personalization comes in two levels; privatepublic

• Personalization is affected by three key factors;

tenurebuilding typetechnology.

Examples


Environments


This row of houses lacks personalization that may cause confusion to the people due to lack of distinctive characteristic.


Environments


The image to the right implies that the owner of the house love plants and has a plentiful time for them, likes traditional and homey designs and loves nature. While the image to the left

implies that the owner of the building works in the office, is busy, has little time or does not like gardening and values functionality.


Environments


These residential buildings, having similar forms would have been

hard to tell one from the other had they not been given different

distinctive designs that helped established their identity as

individual buildings.


Environments


Simply putting up signs and logos in the building’s facade is a form of personalization that can emanateits unique characteristic and values. It becomes easily distinguishable from adjacent buildings.


Environments


An example of a large scale personalization in a public level. The building’s appearance becomes the identity of the town. Santorini, Greece

Summary :

• permeability- designing the overall layout of routes and development blocks

• variety- locating uses on the site• legibility- designing the massing of the buildings and

the enclosure of the public space• robustness- designing the spatial and constructional

arrangement of individual buildings and outdoor spaces.

• visual appropriateness- designing the external image• richness- developing the design for sensory choice• personalization- making the design encourage the

people to put their own mark on the places where they live and work

..END..

BSAR 4A Group 3: DAGUMAN, DEL PILAR, DURAN, ESPIÑA, GATELA

F.C.A.D.

responsive environments

Documents

environment responsive

variety variety

choices people

responsive environmentsplaces

visual permeability

public permeability

varied nature of people

design of environments