Re-conceiving building design quality: A review of building users in their social context

Abstract

Considerable overlap exists between post-occupancy research evaluating building design quality and the concept of ‘social value’, popularised by its recent application to issues of the public realm. To outline this potential research agenda, the paper reviews design quality research on buildings in relation to users and their social context where the term ‘social context’ refers to building user group dynamics, a combination of organisational cultures, management strategies, and social norms and practices. The review is conducted across five key building types, namely housing, workplaces, healthcare, education, and the retail/service sector. Research commonalities and gaps are identified in order to build a more comprehensive picture of the design quality literature and its handling of users in their social context. The key findings concerning each building type are presented visually. It is concluded that the design quality field comprises a patchwork of relatively isolated studies of various building types, with significant potential for theoretical and empirical development through interdisciplinary collaboration. Users tend to be conceived as anonymous and autonomous individuals with little analysis of user identity or interaction. Further, the contextual impact of user group dynamics on the relationship between building design and building user is rarely addressed in the literature. Producing a more nuanced understanding of users in situ is proposed as an important area for future design quality research.

Design Quality in the Context of Healthcare Environments: A Scoping Review

“…Several of the included articles refer to social interactions as a bridge from the healthcare environment to the surrounding community (Castro et al, 2013b; Thomson, O’Keeffe, & Dainty, 2011; Watson et al, 2014). …”

Workplace Privacy: How Job Types Matter

“…Policy supports reflect the rules of an organization that outline work activities that are considered appropriate (Tolbert & Hall, ), such as official HR clarification on acceptable conversation levels that support acoustical privacy for coworkers as part of office protocol. Social and policy supports influence the way individuals and groups identify, interpret, and use the social and physical context of organizational environments (Watson et al, ) to regulate privacy.…”

“…Empirical assessments that focus on one privacy‐regulating mechanism present a partial solution because no single mechanism regulates privacy by itself, independent of the other mechanisms (Kupritz, , ). Specifically, analysis of what constitutes a sound architectural plan for privacy may not support privacy needs across job types if institutional policies (Skogland & Hansen, ; Watson, Evans, Karvonen, & Whitley, ), social norms (Bernstein, : Haans et al, ; McElroy & Morrow, ) or worker behavior in office protocols and training interventions (Ashkanasy, Ayoko, Jehn, ; Huang, Robertson, & Chang, ) that support privacy are not addressed. The present study seeks to provide this synthesis.…”

Post-occupancy evaluation in architecture: experiences and perspectives from UK practice

“…Although the architects interviewed for this study have started to develop an understanding of the importance of these questions, their thinking tends to be based on anecdote rather than sustained research, and few referenced the wide range of relevant scholarship already developed within the academy (Watson et al, 2016). Participants also expressed frustration with existing POE toolkits that appear to favour quantitative measures that capture the 'headlines' (P10), but do not delve into the experiences and feelings of building users or participants.…”

“…Within academic research, the post-occupancy agenda is well established and has produced a rich body of work on the complex interactions between design and people in occupied buildings (Jones & Grigoriou, 2014;Watson, Evans, Karvonen, & Whitley, 2016). The design quality literature has addressed a range of outcomes, including the impact of design on recovery rates (Ulrich, 2008), endof-life care (Barnes, 2002;Torrington, 2007) and depression rates in social housing (Wells & Harris, 2007), on attendance (Durán-Naracki, 2008) and learning in school environments (Barrett, Zhang, Davies, & Barrett, 2015), and on satisfaction (Armitage & Murugan, 2013) and productivity in commercial workplaces (Baird, 2010;Leaman & Bordass, 1999).…”