Interior

Effective Visual Clue on Recovering Orientation in an Interior Space

＜Proceedings of the 5th EBRA International Symposium for Environment-Behavior Studies, Shanghai, China, 155-160, 2002＞　

Masashi Soeda, Ryuzo Ohno

Our previous study revealed that people tended to lose orientation after such vertical traveling as stairs, elevators and escalators, and that some of the subjects could recover it by environmental information. Although the result suggested that the source of information for recovering differed with person and space, we could not specify effective information.
The present research intends to clarify influential visual information on recovering orientation using a visual simulator that enables a subject who wears a Head Mounted Display to walk through and to look around in a model space freely. Three settings of scale models of a two-story library were used in the experiment. In each setting, subjects were led from a start point on the first floor (information desk) to a destination on the second floor (a bookshelf) via elevator, and then they were asked to go back to the start point by themselves. In order to provide a possible visual clue for the subjects to find the start point, the scene that the subjects saw when they get off the elevator on the first floor was differentiated with left and right side by the following conditions: A) windows, B) walls with different colors (no windows), C) walls with same colors and same finishing (no differentiation). 46 graduate students were enrolled in the experiment.
The results indicates that more than 90% of the subjects could find the start point in the setting with windows, whereas 60% of the subjects succeeded in the setting with walls with different colors and less than 50% did in setting with no differentiated visual information. The interview conducted after the experiment reveals that more than 90% of the subjects used the windows to identify where the start point is, however, less than 60% used different colors on the wall. It also shows that almost all the subjects who did not use visual information mentioned above failed to find the start point. These results show that visual information provided by spatial elements helps people to recover orientation in the space, and that the windows are more effective for recovering orientation than changes of colors on walls are. The cause is considered to be the different characteristics of the visual information. Windows give spatial expansion, a view to outdoors and brightness to interior space. These characteristics of windows, which walls do not have, are considered to serve as an effective clue for orientation in an interior space. These results imply that it is important for legible interior space to arrange windows at the place where people tend to lose orientation.

Full paper　→　PDF (EBRA2002)

Perception of the Sense of Enclosure in Interior Spaces with Variations in Transparent and Opaque Surfaces
Environment-Behavior Research on the Pacific Rim: Proceedings of PaPER 98, in printing, the 11th International Conference on People and Physical Environment Research, pp. 35-42, 2001＞
Ryuzo Ohno, Keiichiro Hara
Full paper　→　PDF file	Contemporary buildings often feature enclosed spaces with large areas of window glazing. This study was made to assess the effect on the occupants "sense of enclosure" of different positions and amounts of transparent and opaque surfaces for both daytime and nighttime conditions. Subjects wearing a head-mounted display device permitting a high degree of head movement virtually "visited" a scale model space, under day and night conditions, whose enclosing surfaces were systematically varied with either transparent or opaque surfaces. Analyses of the results indicated that : 1) Judgments of "degree of enclosure" clearly differentiated between spaces with transparent ceiling and those with an opaque ceiling. 2) Subjects feel less enclosed in a space with two adjacent transparent walls than with other arrangements of the same transparent and opaque walls. 3) Larger variation of "degree of enclosure" was noted in case that a transparent ceiling turns to an opaque ceiling than a transparent wall turns to an opaque wall in the daytime, but the opposite was true in the nighttime. 4) The variance of "degree of enclosure" between transparent and opaque surfaces was larger in the daytime than in the nighttime

The Relation between Schemata of Rooms in a House and Evaluation of Restfulness

＜Summaries of Technical Paper of Annual Meeting of Architectural Institute of Japan (Ｅ-１), Pp.773-776, Sep. 1997＞　

Takayuki Shimizu, Ryuzo Ohno

This study intends to clarify the hypothesis that the evaluation of restfulness of a room depends on how it looks closer to observer's schemata. The study conducted an experiment, in which 28 subjects were asked to evaluate 35 pictures of various home interior spaces according to its restfulness and to judge their similarity to one's own image of one of such rooms as living room, dining room, Japanese style room, bedroom and bathroom. As a result, the hypothesis is generally supported by an average analysis although some of schemata for a certain room are not shared.
The analysis of the individual subject's data reveals that even if the score of evaluation differ among the subjects, each subject evaluates the interior space according to one's own schemata. Thus the hypothesis is more clearly supported by the individual analysis than the average one.