Architecture and Arts

Today’s public discourse on the design of care centers for the elderly population is increasingly emphasizing the importance of subjective well-being (SWB) and the value that architecture and interior architecture can have in this respect. This paper elaborates on a design exercise for 10 groups of 4 master students in interior architecture in which they had to rethink the design of the communal space system of an existing residential care center (RCC) with the goal of augmenting the living experience and SWB of the residents and add potential value for the neighbourhood. This design exercise was developed from the dual perspective of (i) developing spatial solutions for improving the positive experience and perceived housing quality of elderly in residential care, and (ii) designing architectural spaces based on ethnographic research performed by the student-designers themselves. The purpose of this research is to develop a design roadmap from the data of the design exercise by analyzing the sequential stages that students ran through and the design strategies that they adopted. The proposed design roadmap is a first step in developing a tool that can ultimately assist designers in creating generous and stimulating architectural environments that have a positive effect on SWB.

Today’s public discourse on the design of care centers for the elderly population is increasingly emphasizing the importance of subjective well-being (SWB) and the value that architecture and interior architecture can have in this respect. This paper elaborates on a design exercise for 10 groups of 4 master students in interior architecture in which they had to rethink the design of the communal space system of an existing residential care center (RCC) with the goal of augmenting the living experience and SWB of the residents and add potential value for the neighbourhood. This design exercise was developed from the dual perspective of (i) developing spatial solutions for improving the
positive experience and perceived housing quality of elderly in residential care, and (ii) designing architectural spaces based on ethnographic research performed by the student-designers themselves.
The purpose of this research is to develop a design roadmap from the data of the design exercise by analyzing the sequential stages that students ran through and the design strategies that they adopted.
The proposed design road map is a first step in developing a tool that can ultimately assist designers in creating generous and stimulating architectural environments that have a positive effect on SWB.

Subjective well-being (SWB) is an emerging research topic in the field of design sciences, whereby various design researchers focus on the key question ‘how to design for SWB’. Throughout different design disciplines, definitions for SWB are rising and design models and strategies are being developed in an effort to enable designers to increase users’ SWB. However, a clear image of how to design an (interior) architectural environment with the purpose of increasing people’s level of subjective well-being is still in its infancy. In this paper we formulate spatial design missions for (interior) architects that possibly ignite or increase users’ SWB. We start from the general PERMA happiness model of Seligman (2011), modify it to our research needs and illustrate it with material from a design exercise that was carried out by master students in interior architecture in which they had to rethink the communal space system of an existing residential care center. We conclude the paper by formulating seven design missions that, in our viewpoint, allow to augment SWB for elderly persons in residential care environments.

Conjoint interiors, the semi-public interior spaces located in e.g. large-scale dwelling projects, host different functions for a variety of users. Designers of conjoint interiors today, face the major challenge of accommodating the increasingly varied design briefs of this variety of users. In these environments, people today tend to emphasize intangible qualities, the ‘feel’ of the environment, much more than tangible ones, i.e., the ‘look’ of the environment. Consequently, instead of working with a purely spatial design brief, designers are now provoked to work with more emotional briefs, taking into account not only the objective and physical characteristics, but also more subjective requirements. Although it is clear that designers of these conjoint interiors will need to work within a more human-centred framework, the question remains of how this process can become more focused towards creating intangible qualities and specific spatial affordances.
To address this question, our contribution investigates the intangible qualities and the design approach of two cases: Dom Narkomfin, the so-called ‘social condenser’ (designed by Ginzburg in 1928), and Layer Cake, the outcome of a 2015 design exercise of a residence for older persons that approaches the conjoint interior from a renewed social perspective. These cases will be analysed via two lenses: (1) a societal perspective, researching context and target group, and (2) a more anthropological perspective, focusing on experiences and intangible design qualities. The results will be used to propose architectural-theoretical principles that attempt to reinvigorate the ‘social condenser’-concept as a way to address new design briefs in conjoint interiors today.

In architectural design for human flourishing (DfHF), compatibility between the environment and the user is crucial. A supportive relationship between the two is characterized by the environment’s action possibilities and the user’s perception thereof in terms of complementarity with the users’ psychological needs and personal goals.
This paper highlights a design method called “programmatic writing”, that was developed in a student design project. Programmatic writing connects target groups’ needs and an enriched program within an architectural design, by applying techniques as narratives and scenario writing. This is a first crucial step in an architectural DfHF-process.
In this paper, first, a short theoretical background of DfHF and the set-up of the design project are sketched. Next, the development of the design method is discussed through an analysis of the design process in the exercise. Hereby, we aim to contribute to the development of an architectural DfHF-process.

The faculty of Architecture and Arts welcomes applications for an innovative international master's programme in interior architecture with a strong focus on adaptive reuse.

http://www.uhasselt.be/Master-of-interior-architecture-adaptive-reuse

In this paper, the “mental map” concept is positioned with regard to individual travel behaviour to start with. Based on Ogden and Richards’ triangle of meaning (The meaning of meaning: a study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism. International library of psychology, philosophy and scientific method. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1966) distinct

Abstract This study addresses complex daily activity-travel routines of households with young children and their proper representation in a computational process model of travel demand using family skeletons expressed as family sequence patterns. Building on ...

In this paper, the "mental map" concept is positioned with regard to individual travel behavior to start with. Based on Ogden and Richards' triangle of meaning (1966) distinct thoughts, referents and symbols originating from different scientific disciplines are identified and explained. Furthermore, this research addresses the use and relevance of these constructs to understand and model individual travel demand, and specifies them using two computational models, i.e. Bayesian Inference Networks (BIN) and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM). The mental map is commonly used to represent the internal knowledge base of a living data processor, i.e. notions and know-how in the mind concerning a certain issue or question. Most often, this concept is related to geographical or spatial aspects -hence the use of the "map" metaphor (Kuipers, 1982) -but distinct interpretations exist in different scientific fields. Ever since behavioral psychologist Tolman (1948) first put forw...