129 research outputs found
State of the art: museum additions and their impact on occupant experience
No full textThis dissertation takes a critical look at the effects of art museum additions on occupants by addressing key questions: How does museum addition design affect visitors’ and museum employees’ perceptions and experiences of “front stage” areas such as art galleries compared to employees perceptions and experiences of “back stage” areas such as their work spaces? How does it affect the newly transformed museum building’s overall identity, image, spatial layout, and aesthetics?
Vast sums of money spent to design, construct, operate and maintain museum additions demand great accountability of museum leaders and design professionals towards museum visitors and employees. In an age where “starchitects” design buildings from squiggles drawn on cocktail napkins, an urgent need for evidence-based design exists. Evidence from in-depth studies of human factors in relation to design are necessary to respond to visitors’ needs and the experience of viewing art. The museum narrative is framed not only by art objects but also by the space that contains them and how occupants experience this space. More post-occupancy evaluations of high-profile museum additions will help museum leaders and architects understand their successes, shortcomings, and how their designs affect both the visitors and the employees who use them every day.
This study focuses on post-1970 building additions of four premier art museum institutions of the US: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO, the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, AZ, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, NY, and the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL. It employs a cross-section of methods consisting of assigning space syntactic typologies to museum spaces combined with on-site physical observations in all the four museums mentioned above, a qualitative content analysis of critics’ reviews on additions to all four museums in the popular press—before and after they were built, physical measurements of illuminance of back spaces of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Phoenix Art Museum and front spaces of all four museums, and collecting museum employee feedback via an online survey and on-site interviews at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Phoenix Art Museum.
Most employees had positive overall opinions of the museum addition and also perceived their fellow employees’ opinions and visitors’ opinions as being positive, but they identified the need to make a number of improvements for accessibility and wayfinding in the museum. Observations confirmed these responses; the front stage spaces of museums for visitors were beset with problems of accessibility and wayfinding in both the new and old parts of the buildings—factors which also affected visitation levels in art galleries. Besides blockbuster shows and special exhibitions, the locations of art galleries (syntactic typologies) in the Met and the Art Institute were found to have an influence on their visitation levels. The lack of adequate amenities such as restrooms, water fountains, and seating, were also found to contribute to museum fatigue in visitors and employees. Museum fatigue had also increased in proportion with building size due to new additions; this was clearly a growing concern among museum employees.
The majority of light levels in art galleries were at optimum settings for art conservation. Many of them, however, did not meet accessibility requirements for ambient lighting, reading text panels, directional signage, and looking at specimens or objects, creating safety concerns and denying equal opportunities to individuals with disabilities. Art gallery lighting also added to the numerous accessibility concerns related to gallery walks, ramps, and wayfinding in all case studies. It was clear that occupants did not share equal status with the art in the museum.
Employee feedback and observations of their work spaces provided insights into the inner workings of art institutions. Results showed that in the process of creating additions, decision-makers mostly ignored the human aspect. New additions with daylighting and other major upgrades in visitor spaces at the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum did not improve working conditions for employees in back spaces. They worked in spaces that were mostly windowless, without daylight and views, and very often located in basements—in the new museum wings as well as in the older buildings.
This dissertation gives an insider's perspective on the state of the occupants and how and why various decisions were made in museum addition designs. It moves the spotlight away from the usual debates on architectural forms and blockbuster exhibtions, and focuses it on museum occupants instead. By touching on key issues affecting perceptions and experiences of museum employees and visitors, this study bridges the gap between occupants and architectural design while illuminating the myriad ways in which museum additions have been conceived to date. The findings inform stakeholders in museums about the short-term and long-term impact of new additions and provide them with data for making an educated assessment of new museum addition proposals and projects in the future.
Rather than attempting to be a how-to guide on museum additions, this study offers decision-makers a new approach through its findings. In its conclusions, it also offers some recommendations for future museum expansion projects. These recommendations include investing in employee work environments, conducting more internal post-occupancy studies of non-public spaces in the museum, and giving serious consideration to the effects of museum fatigue that arise from the lack of public amenities, wayfinding, and accessibility issues. Inadequate amenities such as water fountains and seating, toilets that are hard to find, and signs that are hard to read or understand can be just as upsetting for the visitor, as a gallery with a famous work of art that is temporarily closed. Museums must work harder to provide these facilities for visitors to be more comfortable and satisfied during their visit. Daylighting in art galleries also plays a significant role in the occupant experience; the key to managing daylighting strategies in museums is finding the right balance between conservation, visual comfort, accessibility, and desired ambience. Museum administrators and architects must identify all these goals from the very beginning when planning new building additions.Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2016-03-02 without embargo termsThe student, Altaf Engineer, accepted the attached license on 2015-09-04 at 08:16.The student, Altaf Engineer, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2015-09-04 at 08:40.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2015-09-11 at 15:59.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #8682 on 2016-03-02 at 12:48:57Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-02T19:33:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
ENGINEER-DISSERTATION-2015.pdf: 143495893 bytes, checksum: 589962f30cbc382f7accbda38a8d45a3 (MD5)
LICENSE.txt: 4211 bytes, checksum: 879e73eb5e77cabb2940885d12fc2755 (MD5)
Previous issue date: 2015-09-1
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Post COVID-19 Design for Flexible Workspaces
No full textThe office was an integral part of the day-to-day lives of millions of businesses and individuals before the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and is the second most popular building type in the US. During the pandemic, the office became instantly obsolete to nearly 71% of office workers in the United States of America. The shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted conventional workplace norms, culture, and design trends. Concerns of how to safely re-enter the workplace in the midst of COVID-19 are now replaced by concerns of how to get people back to the office in general. Many people discovered the benefits of working from home while still being productive, conventional office spaces became less desirable to them. This study examines the design of office spaces and its impact on wellbeing and performance including social and behavioral issues. It tracks the evolution of offices in the past decades and reveals how typical office designs prioritized productivity over physical and mental health. It aims to evaluate the benefits, now given all that has been learned amidst work from home and office design. It is hypothesized that the increasing popularity of coworking spaces prior to the pandemic may provide some insights in this regard. The study aims to understand the benefits of social connections in the workplace. It examines nine coworking spaces located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Users of these spaces were surveyed and their workspaces were observed unobtrusively to better understand the relationship between office design and social, physical, and mental wellbeing. Many of the survey respondents found social relationships in the workplace to play a significant role in their sense of wellbeing, performance, and productivity. The findings of this study of coworking spaces were used to formulate guidelines and recommendations for current and future office designs, prediction of design trends, and directions for future research
Healing Spaces
No full textThe field of design and health, formerly known as the domain of healthcare design professionals, has now reached a turning point with the proliferation of a plethora of non-invasive wearable technologies, to provide the objective and near-real-time measurement of the impact of many features of the built environment on aspects of health, wellbeing and performance. In turn, new materials and the Internet of Things are allowing the development of smart buildings, which can interact with occupants to optimize their health, wellbeing, performance and overall experience. Companies that have previously focused on positioning themselves as “green” are now turning to positioning themselves in the marketplace as both green and healthy. This Special Issue will include articles that address new cutting edge technologies and materials at the interface between design and health, and review some of the latest findings related to studies which use these technologies. This SI will also suggest exciting future directions for the field. It will include articles which focus on the objective data gathered to document the effects of the built environment on health. Importantly, it will focus on the use of innovative methods of measurement, such as state-of-the-art wearable and environmental sensors, quantifying some aspects of health, such as stress and relaxation responses, activity, posture, sleep quality, cognitive performance and wellbeing outcomes. It will also examine the impacts of different elements of the built environment on these health and wellbeing outcomes. The published articles will focus on the design interventions informed by these measurements, along with innovative integrated building materials that can shape the design of built environments for better health, productivity, and performance. It will also address the return on investment (ROI) of such design interventions. This Special Issue will provide both the foundational knowledge and fundamentals for characterizing human health and wellbeing in the built environment, as well as the emerging trends and design methods for innovations in this field
Designing supportive soundscapes for nursing home residents with dementia
No full textSound and its resulting soundscape is a major appraisal component of the living environment. Where environmental sounds (e.g., outdoor traffic sounds) are often perceived as negative, a soundscape (e.g., containing natural sounds) can also have a positive effect on health and well-being. This supportive effect of a soundscape is getting increasing attention for use in practice. This paper addresses the design of a supportive sonic environment for persons with dementia in nursing homes. Starting from a review of key mechanisms related to sonic perception, cognitive deficits and related behavior, a framework is derived for the composition of a sonic environment for persons with dementia. The proposed framework is centered around using acoustic stimuli for influencing mood, stimulating the feeling of safety and triggering a response in a person. These stimuli are intended to be deployed as added sounds in a nursing home to improve the well-being and behavior of the residents
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Passive Strategies for Reducing the Impact of Outdoor Air Pollutants on Indoor Air Quality: A Combination of CAM Plants and Hydrogel Filters
No full textWater and plants absorb 55% of the carbon dioxide and pollutants introduced into the atmosphere (Ref?). This absorption of carbon dioxide, along with the production of oxygen, is recognized as the largest operation in nature (NASA, 2011), which has significant implications for improving the indoor air quality (IAQ) of built environments. Thus, this study hypothesizes that a natural ventilation system comprising filtration through plants and saturated hydrogels is effective for improving IAQ by decreasing the amount of airborne pollutants entering interior spaces from the urban environment. Various plant types were analyzed to compare their efficiency in reducing CO2 and other air pollutants. Of these, plants that utilize Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) were found to be the most efficient. The saturated hydrogels within the filtration system maintain spacing to allow hot-dry outdoor air to pass through and thus simultaneously diffuse water vapor while adsorbing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulate matter of different sizes (PM10 and PM2.5).
The hypothesis was tested via two methods. First, the efficiency of a solar chimney in creating airflow inside a room was studied via computer simulations. Second, a physical model was subsequently created to test how plants, a hydrogel filter, and their combination affect IAQ, measured by air quality through sensors inside and outside the model. The study was conducted in March in Tucson, Arizona, which has a typical hot, arid climate. The results of the testing indicate the proposed solutions can lower the indoor temperature via evaporative cooling and increase humidity levels to 46%, as recommended by a recent IAQ study (Razjouyan, et al., 2020). The results also reveal a significant reduction in levels of VOCs, CO2, PM10, and PM2.5. Thus, the proposed ventilation system has significant implications for future designs seeking to ensure optimum IAQ via natural ventilation strategies
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Adaptive Façade Design for Glare Mitigation and Outside Views in Work Environments
No full textWe know that providing more natural light in a building, results in higher worker performance and health benefits for in office spaces. Using fully glazed building façades to maximize daylight penetration in office buildings, may however, result in visual comfort due to daylighting glare. The challenge is to design a façade shading system that optimizes daylight penetration, maximizes the outside view, and reduces glare and visual discomfort at the same time. One of the most popular shading systems for reducing glare and improving visual comfort is the adaptive façade system (AFs) which is often used at the cost of reducing or eliminating the outside view. In this thesis, a parametric-based adaptive façade system (PAFs) is proposed to improve a conventional AF, to mitigate daylighting discomfort glare while optimizing daylight penetration and outside views in an office environment. This study investigates the application of this method for a real office space in the city of Isfahan, Iran, which has a hot and dry climate. Computer simulations of parametric-based adaptive façade models are created by using a Grasshopper software plug-in for the simulation program Rhino. These simulations are developed for several variables including indoor views, horizontal and vertical motions of the dynamic adaptive façade, at different days and times to assess its performance. The environmental plug-ins of Ladybug and Honeybee are also employed thereafter, to analyze the visual performance variables of Useful Daylight Illuminance (UDI), Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA), Daylight Glare Index (DGI) and Daylight Glare Probability (DGP) in the workplace. The final results confirm the efficiency of the PAF’s daylighting and view control strategies. The DGP, DGI, UDI are less than .35, less than 24, and between 300-700 Lux respectively, thereby meeting Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) guidelines (2010) at least 80 percent of the time while maintaining and maximizing an outside view for the users.
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Method to Analysis Daylight Strategies in Production Home Prototypes: A Case Study of the Appaloosa Plan
No full textIn an individual’s life there are several major decisions they must make, one of the most significant being what kind of home they live in. Oftentimes the home type prospective homebuyers choose is a detached, single-family residence. Of detached-single family residences in the United States production homes account for 73% of detached, single-family homes in residential new construction. Due to this high market share of detached, single-family homes being production homes it is vital to assess the quality of the homes being produced.
One important lens to evaluate production homes through is the daylighting conditions of the home. The presence of daylight in architectural applications has been shown to be highly beneficial to occupants in elevating their mood, maintaining their circadian rhythms, increasing productivity and reducing fatigue. This research aims to study the daylight conditions of the base floor plan of Taylor Morrison’s Appaloosa plan in Estates at Eastmark Venture II Collection community in Mesa, Arizona as a case study to define a methodology of orientation-based optimization using a Window to Floor Ratio (WFR) calculation. The analysis of the base case Appaloosa plan showed a consistency of under-illuminated conditions in the living area as referenced against IESNA standards within the home at all orientations during the winter and over-illuminated conditions in the dining room during the summer and winter.
Two redesigns were conducted including one redesign incorporating only sidelighting strategies and the other including sidelighting and top lighting daylight strategies. The results of these redesigns concluded in redesign one for the living area having an average of 25.7 F.C. for the North, 26.04 F.C. for the East, 25 F.C. for the South, and 22.85 F.C. for the West Orientation. Due to the inability of the West to reach the minimum amount of F.C. to be considered well-lit a second redesign was done and in this the West Orientation achieved 25.04 F.C. The dining room in comparison was able to achieve compliance with one redesign with results showing an average of 19.27 F.C. for the North, 18.42 F.C. for the East, 17.78 F.C. for the South, and 18.02 F.C. for the West orientation during the summer. The winter dining room in comparison was still in compliance with the range of being well-lit but tended to have results with less F.C. such as the North at 18.23 F.C., the East at 16.44 F.C., the South at 16.12 F.C., and the West orientation at 16.35 F.C
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Optimizing Views and Daylight Performance to Promote Human Comfort and Learning Processes in Educational Spaces: A Case Study of a Second Language Classroom
No full textThe lack of architectural designers who create specifically for second language learners’ educational environment spaces is the main drive of this research. Psychiatric illness, specifically anxiety, is a common challenge for classroom-based students who seek to learn a second language. This challenge leads language learners to face difficulty in achieving their goals and often prevents them from realizing their educational intentions. One major component affecting students’ anxiety is their surrounding classroom environment.This thesis considers the strong relationship between a classroom’s surrounding environment and anxiety reduction, and the overall improvement of learning performance. Environmental factors such as daylight and environmental views are this research’s focus strategies to optimizing studying environments. The three steps in this research occur sequentially. First, it will determine relationships between the classroom environment, second language students, and anxiety. Next, it will study applied environmental strategies using classroom-based background research, exploring responsive strategies that help optimize daylight and environmental views in second language classrooms. Finally, it will explore the application of how classroom environment responds to architectural techniques in the base case to achieve optimized environmental factors and share findings and provide recommendations.
This research is comprised of outcomes from previous research deriving from strong data regarding the classroom environment, adapting environmental factors, and the psychological state of second language students. Objective and subjective methods are implemented to improve the indoor environmental quality of the classroom. Physical measurements will be taken in the base case at first, including documenting the size of the room as well as determining the daylighting levels with a lux meter. Said measurements will be used to obtain data pertaining to the illuminance and luminance levels of the base case classroom.
Next, REVIT software to build a digital model of the base case with applying data those were gathered previously. Test the digital model in the VELUX software from the daylighting aspect by comparing it to the reading from the Lux meter. Next, new strategies will be utilized to develop the optimal outcome for the proposed environmental classroom and will then be assessed with VELUX software. Finally, Improving the outdoor views and visual comfort through the questioner were given to the students.
The research findings herein urge architects and designers to develop classrooms by taking into consideration optimal environmental factors that enhance classroom-based second language student learning outcomes. By implementing such surrounding environmental factors, we might achieve optimal results in the classroom and improve students’ psychological well-being
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A Methodology to Assess and Mitigate Daylight Discomfort Glare and Provide Views in Daylit Learning Environments
No full textDaylight Discomfort Glare (DDG) is a common problem in many learning environments. It has been the topic of a significant body of research, and many attempts have been made to develop a reliable method to assess and mitigate it. In learning environments, students often prefer to select seats with views to connect with the outdoor environment while performing tasks. However, providing views is contingent upon having glare-free windows. This issue is challenging due to the very dynamic changes of outdoor illuminations and the complicated nature of the glare phenomenon.
In this thesis, the latest reliable factors affecting DDG are investigated and a “Glare-Free Design” methodology is proposed to ensure providing quality views. The study also includes multi-fold contributions. First, the Daylight Glare Probability (DGP) metric is analyzed by conducting an extensive study on understanding the factors contributing to DDG and their impacts on DGP. A summary with sketches and graphs is also provided for architects to allow them to easily understand DDG occurrence. Second, a methodology is established to assess and mitigate DDG in learning environments with a real-world example of the public study areas at University of Arizona Main Library. Third, “Glare-Reduction” design strategies are implemented to mitigate DDG to imperceptible levels and achieve visual comfort for more than 80% of space users. Additional strategies are applied to augment the illuminance intensities on the interior surfaces and further balance out the overall daylighting distribution.
The thesis findings are supplemented by collecting data, carrying out field measurements, and creating a computer simulation model. The model is created using the software programs Rhino and DIVA. A correlation between the simulation results and the experiment is made and reveals low validation error for the methodology. Eventually, an advanced annual glare analysis is produced, and results are obtained to be used as the basis to propose multiple climate-based strategies at the iteration process. The iteration process is a feedback-loop-based process meaning that after implementing each strategy a check process on glare takes place. This overall methodology can be used for any other learning environment while considering climate and orientation
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Building for Tomorrow: Enhancing Existing Structures with Adaptable Strategies in the Face of Climate Change
No full textAs climate change intensifies, it poses severe challenges to existing built environments. This thesis, explores adaptable strategies that enhance the resilience of existing structures against climate variability, with a focus on historical buildings. The research is grounded in the context of Tucson, Arizona—a region experiencing significant climate impacts such as extreme heat and drought. By utilizing the Smith House on the University of Arizona campus as a case study, the study evaluates various adaptable interventions designed to improve thermal comfort and reduce energy dependency on mechanical systems. Through simulations and digital modeling, the thesis identifies key strategies, such as improved insulation, incorporation of smart materials, and retrofitting with energy-efficient systems, that can significantly reduce a building’s Energy Use Intensity (EUI) while enhancing its adaptability to changing climate conditions. The findings underscore the importance of integrating adaptive architectural practices into the maintenance lifecycle of buildings to ensure long-term sustainability and resilience. This study contributes to the field by offering practical insights into the adaptive retrofitting of historic buildings, highlighting a balanced approach to preserving architectural heritage while enhancing energy efficiency and occupant comfort in response to the evolving climate landscape
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