IALH Research Fellow Robert Gifford has co-authored a new research article entitled The meaning of the built environment: A comprehensive model based on users traversing their university campus with colleague Somayeh Rafiei. The article was published in Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Abstract:
What do built environments mean to individuals who use them? This study developed a proposed comprehensive model of the meaning of the built environment by asking students and staff members of a university how they experience the built environment of the campus as they walked along their own usual paths while being interviewed. Qualitative analyses of the interviews produced the model. It includes ten categories of meaning: perceived efficiency, convenience, legibility, coherence, familiarity, psychological comfort, agency, invitingness, vitality, and richness. The ten categories are subsumed in four overarching themes: physical responsiveness, making sense, sense of belonging, and magnetism. The model invites replication in other built settings, but forms a promising framework for the design of buildings that should improve the experiences of future building users.
To read the full article, see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101975