Description
This project is an investigation into quantifying the effects of architecture on mental health. It uses as a test case an ongoing design project for a private high school in Northern Illinois that is pursuing an extensive renovation and new addition to their facility centered explicitly around fostering socialization and encouraging disengagement from digital devices and social media as a way to promote student mental health. The question of whether buildings shape our behavior has been around for millennia. For many architects, the belief that their work makes a difference in the lives of others is at the core of their commitment to the profession, but within the scientific community, architectural/environmental determinism is questioned. Cognizant of this theoretical context, the project will move between these broader questions and the twin realities of design and construction in order to identify the terms through which the design process and its outcomes should be framed, establish a taxonomy of proposed spatial interventions (and the transitions between them), and develop techniques by which their effectiveness should be evaluated.
Tasks and Responsibilities
The student tasks can be broken down into three main categories:
1. Research/Literature review: Conduct literature review of scientific research on the relationship between architecture and human behavior stemming not only from the disciplinary space of architecture itself, but also from other disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Research both quantitative (e.g. eye-tracking) and qualitative (e.g. post-evaluation surveys) techniques that are commonly used in quantifying the effects of architecture on human behavior, in order to identify techniques applicable to and feasible as part of the research at hand.
2. Analysis: Develop a taxonomy of spatial interventions within the proposed design, which will be documented in the form of architectural drawings (2D and 3D) and diagrams.
3. Design/Production: Identify and develop a set of evaluative tools (such as interview questions, surveys, observation schedules, etc) that will be used in this test case. 4. Should continued SURF funding for this project be approved for fall 2024, assist with implementing the first phase of this research obtaining baseline data at the start of the school year before construction mobilization starts later that winter.