THE EFFECT OF SPATIAL CONFIGURATION ON SOCIAL INTERACTION: ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL INTERACTIONAL SPACES SPATIAL QUALITIES IN A FACULTY BUILDING

Abstract

Social interaction is mentioned as one of humans’ needs because it is a way to fulfill psycho-social requirements in individual development. Spatial configuration can develop movement patterns giving opportunity for social interaction as it defines relationship between spaces where people move, come across and interact with each other. In this study effect of spatial configuration on social interaction is investigated and a research model composed of observation, space syntax analysis and SPSS analysis is used. For case study, Faculty of Fine Arts in Selçuk University is selected. Social interaction activities, spaces preferred for these activities, number of people in these activities and frequency of them are determined by observation. The syntactic values of places are determined by Syntax 2D analysis. The relationship between findings of two analysis is assessed comparatively through SPSS. As a result, it is determined that syntactic characteristics of space is effective on social interactional spaces. The architectural quality of social interactional spaces are also investigated. Consequently, it is expressed that, if a space has a spatial configuration which is accessible, active, connected with other spaces and has a wide and uninterrupted visual area with its surrounding, that space can easily become a dense social interactional space.