Organizational Unit:

School of Architecture

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70770

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Organizational Unit

College of Design

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https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/1120

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10

Redefining the Community Hospital: a Small Town Approach to Medical Planning and Design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-04-09) Dooley, Anthony Jason

Rural hospitals in America hold a critical position within their communities because they possess the duty and responsibility of not only providing adequate healthcare services for the population, but also bearing the heavy burden of functioning as one of the main socio-economic engines within the area. These factors, along with drastically inadequate operating budgets, often create programmatic and operational challenges for these entities to confront as they fight to provide the technologically current facilities and services needed to adequately care for their community. All of this must be done in the most cost effective way possible. This thesis will look at current trends being administered within the widespread replacement effort of these facilities, and propose several alternative strategies aimed at facilitating feasible solutions to these and other issues that are not currently being addressed. Design resolution strategies will be formulated and tested. These will then be directly implemented through a specific project design exercise that will then be evaluated.
Spatial Cognition in Design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-11-16) Ho, Chun-Heng

Previous studies suggest that 3D visualization is fundamental to design spatial cognition, and the capability to work with 3D mental or physical models and taking perspective views from a set of 2D drawings are essential parts of design education, although there is no definitive evidence that can directly support these beliefs. This dissertation focuses on the issues of how spatial capabilities correlate with design performance and whether design education can improve students' spatial capabilities. Two types of capabilities tests, i.e. spatial capability test and general reasoning test, are used, and there are 251 Georgia Tech undergraduate students involved in this research. The results of this research suggest that the correlations between design studio performance and the tested factors are more salient among female students than male students. While female students generally have lower spatial capabilities than male students in design, they can take advantage of their general reasoning capability to compensate for the lack of the other two spatial capabilities and perform well in design studio. A stepwise regression further reveals that, for the female design student group, the general reasoning capability is the only predictor for their design performance. However, no significant interaction is observed in the male design student group between tested capabilities and design studio performance. As a result, there seems to exist a threshold requirement in spatial capabilities for design major students. After passing this threshold, other factors such as domain specific skills and knowledge or self-motivation would likely to be the dominant one. Lastly, although the results show the tested capabilities are all important for design major students from different perspectives, the design education does not show any contribution in the improvement of these capabilities.
Taking the stairs: Environmental features that explain why people use stairs in 3 to 4 story academic workplace buildings

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-05-19) Nicoll, Gayle

Although increasing stair use among adults with sedentary occupations can provide an accessible means of integrating moderate physical activity within daily work routines, there is little evidence-based information available to guide architects on how to design buildings that promote stair use. This study examined the relationship between stair use and a broad range of features of the physical environment within 10 buildings. Based on a review of the literature, a thematic framework (Appeal, Convenience, Comfort, Legibility and Safety) was developed for identifying the features of buildings that may influence stair use. Three methods of investigation were used to examine the relationship between stair use and variables of the five themes and their constructs. Buildings users were surveyed for their reasons for both single and multi-level route choice. The results indicated that reasons associated with convenience and legibility of route had greater influence on route choice than appeal, comfort or safety. Stair and elevator use were measured in the ten buildings along with variables that operationalized the thematic framework. Regression analysis was utilized to examine the relationship between stair use and the operationalized variables of the thematic framework. The results of regression analysis indicated that stair use was associated with 8 key spatial variables of convenience and legibility (travel distances from stair to nearest entrance and to the elevator; percentage of total building area or total occupant load attributed to each stair; physical accessibility of each stair; area of stair isovist; number of turns from the stair to closest entrance and to the most integrated path). Most local environmental features of stairs such as lighting levels and views were not statistically influential. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that three variables (effective area of each stair, area of stair isovist, and number of turns required between the stair and the most integrated path) explained 53% of stair use. A graphic analysis of the arrangement of the 8 key spatial variables within the ten buildings indicated that buildings with high overall levels of stair use optimized the key spatial variables in respect to the location of stair(s) within the building floor plan.
Where older people walk: Assessing the relationship between physical environmental factors and walking behavior of older adults

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-04-11) Joseph, Anjali

The aim of this thesis was to identify the characteristics of path segments and routes that are associated with where older residents choose to walk for recreation or for getting to destinations in retirement communities. The goal was to use the findings from this study to help formulate criteria and strategic choices that can be used to design retirement communities that support walking among elderly residents. Case studies were conducted at three Continuing Care Retirement Communities. The study shows that route choice for walking to destinations is shaped by practical considerations of distance and convenience and largely determined by the relative location of destination and origin. On the other hand, route choice for recreational walking is more complex and is determined by local, relational and structural environmental characteristics of the path segments that comprise the routes as well as characteristics of the residents themselves. Residents chose routes of different difficulty level for walking based on their physical abilities and health. This study also found that many residents chose to walk indoors for recreation, especially along corridors between resident apartments. Understanding how the different factors together shape route choice leads to the clarification of design alternatives. This study suggests that designing campuses to support walking involves not only a careful consideration of individual local path segment characteristics but also an understanding how path segments and routes fit within the larger network of path segments on campus. Further, it is important to design routes with a range of characteristics and a range of challenge so that residents have many options to choose from and they have the option to move from a lower level of challenge to a higher one when they feel ready.
Maximizing the benefits of courtroom POEs in design decision support and academic inquiry through a unified conceptual model.

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-02-10) Pati, Debajyoti

Post-occupancy evaluations represent an important missed opportunity. While POEs are often used to inform design guides, and to support facility management, they are seldom used to support design decision-making. While there are several technical, methodological, and cultural impediments to the ongoing use of POE results in design, characteristics of POE data and data structure is an important, and often overlooked, impediment. Some evaluators have attempted to resolve this problem by involving actively as consultants in design teams or involving users, such as Placemaking or Process Architecture. Recent advances in conceptual data modeling provide another strategy to interface POE findings and design decision-making. This thesis uses EXPRESS modeling language to develop a conceptual data structure for POE data, and integrate POE data with as-built building descriptions. While this effort has the potential to develop an improved way to structure POE data and make it more useful, it is also an extension of ISO-STEP. This study develops a data structure based on post-occupancy evaluations of state and federal trial courtrooms conducted by the researcher. Thirty-one courtrooms were evaluated, resulting in usable data from 93 courtroom users in 26 courtrooms. An EXPRESS-G schema was developed and was translated into a relational database for holding data and running queries. The investigator illustrated a range of query-generated outcomes to support decision-making during design and design review. Such outcomes include exploring existing courtrooms, comprehending the types of design decisions implemented across federal and state courtrooms, identifying design decisions that have been rated favorably or otherwise by courtroom users, rating design decisions based on evaluation data from existing courtrooms, and predicting a designed environments supportiveness to task performance. Further, multivariate analysis of the POE data provides the first scientific investigation of courtrooms as work settings. Finally, eight key performance indicators of courtrooms were developed based on the POE data.
Identifying Relevant Variables for Understanding How School Facilities Affect Educational Outcomes

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-01-07) Bosch, Sheila Jones

Many school facilities in the United States are old, out-of-date, poorly maintained, and lack specific design elements that are likely to enhance teaching, learning, behavior, and other desirable outcomes. This study proposed that one reason why previous research regarding the effects of the physical school environment on educational outcomes has had little impact on the quality of schools is because there is a lack of knowledge about these relationships. A multi-method approach was used to solicit information from educators and researchers familiar with school facility effects literature to develop a set of research priorities to guide future research. In Phase I, a literature analysis provided important physical and outcome variables to seed brainstorming lists used in following phases of the research and provided the basis for a gap analysis to identify unavailable information. A concept mapping methodology was utilized in Phase II to solicit feedback from a group of seventeen experienced educators who were asked to brainstorm a list of measures of student, school, or school district success, sort their final list of more than 100 items into categories that made sense to them, and rate each item regarding how important it is to monitor or otherwise track. Using a Delphi method, a series of four questionnaires was given to a group of experienced researchers who developed a list of physical variables plausibly related to educational outcomes, rated the importance of those items, developed hypotheses that included top-rated physical variables and top-rated outcome variables (i.e., measures of success rated by educators), and then selected from those hypotheses several that became the basis of the recommended research priorities for the field. These research priorities propose investigations of the relationships between a set of physical variables (including the provision of team work stations and faculty collaborative spaces, well-designed circulation spaces, spaces for quiet reflection, adaptable seating, daylighting in classrooms, and overall maintenance and building quality) and a variety of educational outcomes (e.g., achievement, behavior, satisfaction, affective performance).
The role of conceptual diagrams in the architectural design process: case studies of the First Unitarian Church by Louis Kahn, the staatsgalerie by Stirling and Wilford Associates, and the Jewish Museum by Daniel Libeskind

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-12-01) Dogan, Fehmi
Perceptual simulation and analogical reasoning in design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-12) Craig, David Latch
Complex architectural settings : an investigation of spatial and cognitive variables through wayfinding behavior

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-05) Haq, Saif-ul-
Hospitality and visibility in domestic space : an analysis of visual separation between men's and women's domains of domestic space in Riyadh

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000-12) Shraim, Mohammed A.