This study attempts to provide theoretical guidance to scholars who collect facility programming data. To facilitate the organization of their efforts and to enable them to become more efficient data collectors, we begin by developing philosophical and metatheoretical foundations that help create concrete theoretical levels and the related models, research designs, and protocols required for efficient data collection. Activity Theory and systems thinking permit the elaboration of the concept of activity within a dynamic and hierarchical organization. Specifically, sociospatial reality is viewed as a continuum starting with building users moving toward their goals, followed by activities for achieving these goals, identifying user needs that emerge in the process of these activities, and concluding with built environment structures that provide for and satisfy these needs. Because facility programming situations and projects are very different, we offer general guidelines intended to assist programmers develop both project specific frameworks and research designs.Together these methodological foundations ground our framework in the reality of sociospatial relationships and provide guidelines for collecting relevant and usable information for supporting decision making during the facility programming design process.

Human activity is analyzed in numerous ways within the social sciences, as well as within applied areas such as ergonomics, management, marketing, and education. However, these conceptualizations of human activity are not intended for, nor do they contribute to the productive study of the socio-spatial interactions regarding planning and programming of facilities. The goal of this project is to develop methodological foundations for activity analysis and modeling within the area of architectural programming. Our objective is to contribute to the development of a perspective for analyzing activity systems and to facilitate the creation of activity models that may be used to examine socio-spatial interactions. Specifically, this proposal examines the structures of activity that emerge in the process of interactions between people and the built environment in respect to the conditions and resources necessary for efficient performance. The viewpoint proposed establishes the foundations of a "conditions and resources" perspective on activity.

No abstract

This study presents a framework designed to enable facility programming scholars to more easily handle the extremely large amounts of information they typically utilize, to guide the development of their research designs and procedures, and to suggest process structure. This framework's development was informed by both Activity Theory and Systems Theory and synthesizes knowledge about the most important aspects and layers of the sociospatial realm, articulating those analytical clusters that can be used as guides for developing programmatic research designs. The framework created is general enough to cover a wide variety of building types and programming situations. It is also flexible enough to be modified in multiple ways, including the possible addition of vast amounts of supplementary detail, to custom fit a specific facility programming project. The idea of creating a flexible guiding framework is based on the notion that in each programmatic situation content must be updated and aligned with specific organizational realities. Although very important to have theoretical support and shared research experience, each facility programming project is different and requires the adaptation of existing knowledge, as well as methodological erudition and proficiency to deal with the idiosyncrasies that emerge; all of which are possible with this framework. As such, this framework is foundational and pliable enough for further adaptation.The essence of this framework is reflected in by a matrix consisting of vertical and horizontal axes. This matrix emphasizes those facets most important to exploring sociospatial structures and relationships. The horizontal axis of the framework is based on an activity model that consists of agents, their goals, activities, necessary conditions, and the built environment. The vertical axis includes three levels or scales for analyzing the social realm: organization, groups and individuals. Each matrix cell provides information that can be used to develop guidelines for developing customized programmatic research designs and instruments. Each of the resulting 15 cells in this matrix is elaborated in detail. We believe that this framework will make significant contributions to the area of facility programming by providing an easily accessible and useful tool to area experts. This level falls between those of the organization and the individual. It may be subdivided into layers if necessary, depending on the type and structure of the organization, the size of the

No abstract