Spatial Layout and Human Circulation in Public University Buildings: A Conceptual Framework for Post-Occupancy Research in Pakistan
Keywords:
Spatial legibility, corridor quality, public universities, Pakistan, post-occupancy evaluation, human-centered design.Abstract
As soon as you walk into any public university building in Pakistan, you feel it. Something is off. The entrance leads to a hall that branches off in an unclear direction. You turn left and right; it doesn't tell you anything either. This paper emerged from this sense. Not as an abstraction, but from years of experience in and around Pakistan's educational institutions as a professional. These buildings are designed in ways that are not fulfilling their users' needs. Learners walk around, walk around, with unnecessary confusion in their daily life, walk through spaces that were never intended for their movement. In this paper, a framework for studying that failure systematically is proposed and discussed. These five dimensions of spatial circulation experience are majorly focused : spatial legibility, infrastructure, corridor quality, avoidance behavior, and overall satisfaction. Each dimension is considered by drawing on the concepts of space syntax, and human centered design, and also introduce a survey instrument with which the framework can be empirically applied in public universities of Pakistan. The goal is simple. Students from this country should feel at home at the university. They are designed to be broad and easy to read, seated in a comfortable way, cosy corners for reading, and corridors are designed to be orienting rather than confusing. This paper is one step towards an understanding of the reasons why so many of them do not.
