Design indicators affecting the student’s place attachment in open spaces of schools from the perspective of experts in architecture

Ebrahimzadeh, F.; Mehdizadeh Saradj, Fatemeh; Norouzian Maleki, S.; Piri, S.

doi:10.22061/tej.2020.6244.2366

Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

¹ Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch, Tehran, Iran

² Department of Restoration, Faculty of Architecture and Environmental Design, Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran

³ Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22061/tej.2020.6244.2366

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Changes in lifestyle have led to the gradual disconnection of children from nature and open spaces and schools are one of the most important spaces for re-establishing this connection; because it is the second place where children spend a lot of time after home and most of the children's daily physical activities are done during the day. The present study was aimed at explaining the characteristics of school outdoor spaces to improve the children’s relaxation and learning. Hence, after analyzing the information obtained from previous studies, the list of effective criteria to increase children’s sense of attachment to the open spaces of schools was proposed. The study of the research background and the compilation of theoretical foundations were done in two parts: At first, by combining different research studies on the subject of place attachment, the dimensions of place attachment and the factors affecting it., the researchers have tried to deal with the relationship between these factors both with each other and with the issue of architecture in order to determine the effective factors in creating place attachment in the field of architecture., Afterwards, the background of research in the field of children and outdoor space was examined and the effective variables in creating place attachment were identified. Then, these initial criteria were checked on the basis of the perspective of the experts in architecture.
Methods: To achieve the research purpose and find the relationship between the effective factors in place attachment with the extracted variables, the qualitative-quantitative system, the method of content analysis and Delphi technique were used.Therefore, in order to achieve a more comprehensive result and a combination of the quantitative and qualitative content, after searching for sources and collecting information, the content analysis method was used so that the raw data and the existing components can be categorized on an orderly basis. Then, to confirm the framework and the variables extracted by a group of experts in the field of architecture, a questionnaire based on Likert scale was used. The data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed by factor analysis using the SPSS software. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The adequacy of the sample size was also assessed using the KMO statistic and Bartlett’s significance level.
Findings: The results showed that from the perspective of the experts, the independent variables can be classified into five groups of influential factors on the basis of the answers of the respondents. According to the definitions of attachment factors in the research background and the findings of the statistical test, the obtained variables were named. Hence, the variables such as the environmental mobility, space flexibility and cozy corners under (interactive factors), familiar environment, the study period, the child’s gender and culture-economic class (individual factors), dimensions of the open space, physical comfort of the environment, spatial diversity and spatial perception (physical factors), child participation, natural elements of the environment, safety and sense of security (socio-group factors) and playfulness, stimulation of the environment and its color and texture subset (activity factors) were classified.
Conclusion: Based on the research findings, the most important criteria for increasing the child's sense of attachment to the open space of schools were classified into five main factors (interactive, individual, physical, socio-group and activity) and 17 variables.Moreover, strategies along with the above indicators in relation to school design have been proposed so that besides creating an environment that meets the demands of students, opportunities for children to participate can also be provided and, thus, the possibility.

Keywords

20.1001.1.20080441.1399.15.1.15.6

Main Subjects

Learning Environment

COPYRIGHTS
©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.

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