Spatial Cognition
Getting Lost in The Faculty of Architecture
קים דרמון עמית קוחן
•What?
In this exercise we check how does the spatial organization of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning in the Technion, Israel, affects user’s wayfinding upon entering the faculty from the Campus’s main Boardwalk.
•The Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning (FATP) is spread across 2 buildings, Segoe and Amado, and includes the space enclosed between the two (“In-Between), which connects the buildings in two floors.
•Segoe was designed solely for the FATP and Amado (that was built before Segoe) was originally planned for the Faculty of Mathematics, but eventually gave over its first 3 floors to FATP. Each building has its own spatial organization and the In-Between space tries to tie them together to one academic unit.
Why?
Multiple Users of the FATP have different destinations and needs
•The FATP is used by many different users:
•FATP students and staff
•Mathematics Faculty users
•Other Technion students and staff using the buildings’ facilities or passing through the buildings
•Outside visitors and guests
•Disorientation can create tense and stress of getting lost, and lost of valuable time (for instance running late for class). The combination of 2 buildings and the In-Between space can result in a sense of disorientation for users not familiar with the FATP’s complexity.
How?
•Checking Isovists from the Main Entrances from the boardwalks:
•Segoe – 2nd, 3rd, 4th floors
•Amado – 2nd, 3rd floors
•Checking Isovists for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors of the FATP’s Vertical Circulation
•Visual Graph Analysis for all 3 floors
Results
In Conclusion of the FATP’s spatial organization upon entering the faculty from the Campus’s main Boardwalk.
•The FATP is organized differently in every floor. Thus there is not one definite Faculty Center and user must be aware of the different organization of each floor to get around easily.
•Upon entering the FATP from the 2nd or 3rd floors it may be easy to get disoriented as one can barely see all the different vertical circulations or long horizontal corridors.
•In most cases, except the small 4th floor, one circulation system doesn’t see the other, therefore the user can experience confusion and problems in wayfinding.