Compatible spaces for emotional support of child and adolescent patients : design of in-between and outdoor spaces in healthcare settings

This thesis addresses the importance for child and adolescent patients to have contact with such outdoor spaces that conform with their emotional state and promote well-being while being at healthcare settings. In some contemporary hospitals, holistic approaches to patients’ health are used in such a way that they may be beneficial for the whole healing process. Holistic healing goes way beyond the technological development and medicinal treatment and is helping the individual to achieve a positive emotional state, encouraged by the design of healing outdoor environments. Unfortunately, such landscapes are not always available. Children and adolescents are dependent on adults’ decisions while their capabilities to sustain emotional balance are still developing. That is why this group of patients should have an easy access to intentionally designed outdoor environments for supporting their emotional balance. Landscape architecture can benefit from including a connection between emotions and design. Emotions have, therefore, been studied through the field of psychology and environmental psychology to inform about requirements regarding spatial qualities which contribute to positive emotional experiences for child and adolescent patients. Further, a method triangulation including participation of child and adolescent patients has been used to study the experiences of the focus group. A theoretical bridge has been needed in order to link emotions with landscape architecture. The theoretical bridge has been supported here by the Self-perception theory while for design issues the concept of emotional design and the practices for psycho-social support have been considered. As a result of this thesis, I compiled guidelines which I tested through a design for a case hospital later in the process. The guidelines are based on the aspects found as important such as architectural communication, compatible spaces and in-between spaces. Five space types have been identified to be compatible with the emotions of child and adolescent patients

Parametric Experiments on Palladio’s 5 by 3 Villas

This paper investigates and describes the parametric reconstruction of Palladio’s villas, using his treatise, I Quattro libri dell’architettura, as the primary source. The process starts with an extensive comparison of Palladio’s rooms’ ratios, the compositional rules of the villas’ plans, and the digital creation of parametric architectural elements. Finally, the process of parametric construction on three selected case studies of 5 by 3 villas—Villa Poiana, Villa Zeno, and Villa Thiene in Cicogna—is undertaken. The developed instrument offers an experimental laboratory in which different hypotheses of integration by the authors, or other scholars with reference to the sources, could be tested

Simulating The Evacuation Of Students Attending Classes At The York University's Keele Campus

Since 1901, Canada has recorded over a thousand disasters (CDD, 2015). Ontario, a province possessing the highest number of incidents and evacuations, has adapted and learned from these experiences. The Emergency Movement and Civil Protection Act (1990) for example, legally obliged government organizations to maintain an emergency management program. Despite the measures set out by the government there were still a dominant paradigm of disaster, leading many to believe nothing could be done, when one occurs, or that they would not be affected one. Morris (2009) proved otherwise when it came to school shootings (a technological disaster). Morris illustrated awareness and preparedness in school led to resilient students who were less affected by the disasters. An important observation, as school disasters in particular have the ability to cause jarring impacts to a community. This Major Paper presents a simulation model that evacuates students attending classes at the York University Keele Campus. The agent-based model was constructed with data acquired from York University's Office of Institutional Planning & Analysis, York University?s Planning & Architectural Design branch of the Campus Services and Business Operation, and scientific journals. The model reproduces the number of registered students during the winter semester of 2014, from Monday to Sunday. This cycle stops, when a signal is given, informing of an evacuation. From this instance, students, proceeded through a series of steps before arriving to one of four predetermined evacuation zones. These steps included: 1) pre-movement 2) descend the corresponding multi-floored building and 3) travel at an assigned speed to the evacuation zone. Forty evacuation scenarios, ten for each evacuation zones, were generated at varying times of day, throughout the week. The gathered times were further analyzed with three variables: the student population, the number of buildings holding classes, and the percentage of buildings within the vicinity of an evacuation zone. The student population demonstrated a logarithmic relationship with time, where evacuation time became more consistent as the population sized increased. When it came to the analysis of the number of buildings holding classes, the greater number of buildings, meant the buildings were more spread out and resulted in similar evacuation time for all four evacuation zones. The last case examined the percentage of buildings within the vicinity of an evacuation zone, half of the evacuation zones possessed a linear relationship, where the greater percentages meant a shorter arrival time

Decreasing spatial disorientation in care-home settings: How psychology can guide the development of dementia friendly design guidelines

Alzheimer’s disease results in marked declines in navigation skills that are particularly pronounced in unfamiliar environments. However, many people with Alzheimer’s disease eventually face the challenge of having to learn their way around unfamiliar environments when moving into assisted living or care-homes. People with Alzheimer’s disease would have an easier transition moving to new residences if these larger, and often more institutional, environments were designed to compensate for decreasing orientation skills. However, few existing dementia friendly design guidelines specifically address orientation and wayfinding. Those that do are often based on custom, practice or intuition and not well integrated with psychological and neuroscientific knowledge or navigation research, therefore often remaining unspecific. This paper discusses current dementia friendly design guidelines, reports findings from psychological and neuropsychological experiments on navigation and evaluates their potential for informing design guidelines that decrease spatial disorientation for people with dementia

Neighborhood of Hope

The United States is the global leader in lock-ups with 2.3 million people currently in jails and prisons. Since the 1970s, marginalized groups, such as African Americans and Latinos, have been victims of an outdated criminal justice system. Due to policy changes in sentencing law and policy, the results have been overcrowding and fiscal burdens on the states. When the war on drugs initiative was approved in the late 1980s, under the Reagan administration, mass incarceration became a topic of controversy and then a reality as more minorities were put into the criminal justice system. This epidemic was the caveat for a new version of the Jim Crow laws. These disenfranchised minority groups were positioned into a caste system that was invisible to them as they proceeded through the custody and incarceration process. Regardless if you paid your dues and served your time, once you are put into the system, your rights are reduced to that of a second-class citizen for life. In the past 15 years, we have made some considerable and what seemed impossible changes to how we house those that have been incarcerated. Evidence-based research has been a driving force for such changes. The first humane prison was built in Halden, Norway in 2009. The focus was on detention and rehabilitation, designing for the inmates to move between the different spaces and buildings creating a relationship with time and place; necessary rhythms of life. In the U.S. the Las Colinas Women's Detention Center was built in Southern California in 2015. A college campus typology was used for the master plan with variations of outdoor spaces and large window openings to access natural daylight and take advantage of the Southern California landscape and climate. The interior spaces were designed to promote educational, vocational, personal, and spiritual growth. Staff members have witnessed a positive change in behavior of the inmates as well as a reduction in stress and anxiety in the work environment

Open house: extending the housing program; learning from the "extreme"

The current thesis is both a research & design project on how the collective housing of tomorrow is shaped. It takes as reference Covid-19 pandemic- as a period of time that both collective and domestic were challenged- in order to document and analyze -under this extreme condition of living- what new characteristics have emerged in terms of practice, typology, operation and initiative. The documentation is conducted through a designed building of collective housing (La Borda, Barcelona) and a collection of photos showcasing the collective activity developed in the existing housing building stock. The mapping and analysis of the new, incoming elements among with 3 selected study cases -using different approaches on the topic- will provide the design tools in order to shape an extended and more collective vision for the housing program inside the existing building stock

Application of Building Typologies for Modelling the Energy Balance of the Residential Building Stock

Building typologies can serve as a basis for analysing the national housing sector. During the TABULA project which was introducing or further developing building typologies in thirteen EU countries, six of the European partners have carried out model calculations which aim at imaging the energy consumption and estimating the energy saving potentials of their national residential building stocks (IWU / Germany, NOA / Greece, POLITO / Italy, VITO / Belgium, STU-K / Czech Republic, SBi / Denmark). The results show that the model calculations can provide plausible projections of the energy consumption of the national residential buildings stock. The fit of model calculations and national energy statistics is satisfactory, deviations can often be explained and corrected by adapting standard boundary conditions of the applied calculation models to more realistic values. In general, the analysis shows that building typologies can be a helpful tool for modelling the energy consumption of national building stocks and for carrying out scenario analysis beyond the TABULA project. The consideration of a set of representative buildings makes it possible to have a detailed view on various packages of measures for the complete buildings stock or for its sub-categories. The effects of different insulation measures at the respective construction elements as well as different heat supply measures including renewable energies can be considered in detail. The quality of future model calculations will depend very much on the availability of statistical data. For reliable scenario analysis information is necessary about the current state of the building stock (How many buildings and heating systems have been refurbished until now?) and about the current trends (How many buildings and heating systems are being refurbished every year?). The availability and regular update of the relevant statistical data will be an important basis for the development and evaluation of national climate protection strategies in the building secto

A generic housing grammar for the generation of different housing languages: a generic housing shape grammar for Palladian villas, Prairie and Malagueira houses

Shape grammars have traditionally described a design language and replicated it using a procedure. In the majority of existing studies, one language corresponded to one grammar and vice versa; the generative procedure was univocal and language specific. Generic grammars, which are capable of describing multiple design languages, potentially allow greater flexibility and help describe not only languages but relationships between languages. This study proposes a generic housing process based on a parametric shape grammar, and uses this to investigate relationships between several grammars or families of designs. A study case of three single housing grammars was selected using the Palladian villas, Prairie and Malagueira houses. Specific parameterisation confers the sense of style required to define a language. From the generated corpora two methods were exercised to explore two research questions: 1. A qualitative method tested how the parametric space of a shape grammar corresponded with our intuition of similarities and differences amongst designs. This was performed using a set of questionnaires posed to both laymen and expert observers. 2. A quantitative method was used to test how well the parametric space of a shape grammar coincided with the design space expressed by the different corpora. Principal Components Analysis was used to inform if the set of parameters used to design the solutions would group into clusters. Results indicate that the expected relationships between individual designs are captured by the generic grammar. The design solutions generated by the generic grammar were also naturally perceived by observers and clustering was identified amongst language related design solutions. A tool such as a generic shape grammar captures the principles of design as described by the generative shape rules and its parameterisation, which can be used in academia, practice or analysis to explore design

Designing Atmospheres: Theory and Science

This book was born as the legacy of the “Designing Atmospheres: Theory and Science” Symposium, an Interfaces event of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA), sponsored by the EU’s Horizon 2020 MSCA Program — RESONANCES Project, the Perkins Eastman Studio, and the Architecture Department at Kansas State University. The event was hosted in the College of Architecture, Planning and Design (APDesign), Kansas State University (K-State), Manhattan, KS, on March 28, 2023. Recent advances in science confirm many of the architects’ deep-rooted intuitions, improving knowledge about the perception of space and the meaning of architectural and urban design. This volume collects four essays: “Investigating Atmosphere in Architecture: An Overview of Phenomenological and Neuroscientific Methods” by Elisabetta Canepa; “Rhythms of the Brain, Body, and Environment: A Neuroscientific Perspective on Atmospheres” by Zakaria Djebbara; “A History of Tool-Atmospheres” by Kory Beighle; and “Atmospheric Histrionics” by Harry Francis Mallgrave. Bob Condia provided a critical introduction entitled “The Design of Atmospheres.”https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1050/thumbnail.jp

Designing Atmospheres: Theory and Science

Recent advances in science confirm many of the architects’ deep-rooted intuitions, improving knowledge about the perception of space and the meaning of architectural and urban design. This volume collects four essays: “Investigating Atmosphere in Architecture: An Overview of Phenomenological and Neuroscientific Methods” by Elisabetta Canepa; “Rhythms of the Brain, Body, and Environment: A Neuroscientific Perspective on Atmospheres” by Zakaria Djebbara; “A History of Tool-Atmospheres” by Kory Beighle; and “Atmospheric Histrionics” by Harry Francis Mallgrave. Bob Condia provided a critical introduction entitled “The Design of Atmospheres.