STUDIO BAS SALA
Small public behavior
Day of Architecture. location: Air. The woman in the red coat is an actress who understands the behavior of the trying to influence people.
Day of Architecture. location: Fenixloodsen
Research into behavior in public space in collaboration with
Floor van Ditzhuyzen and Sander van der Ham.
Every space elicits a unique behavioral pattern in users. Which behavior is most common can depend on a variety of factors. The layout of the room is an important part of this. The layout often explains that people behave differently in one square than in another. The American urban sociologist and researcher William H. Whyte investigated this question in New York in the 1970s. He wondered why one square worked and the other didn't. He showed in detail how the layout of the space can determine the use and behaviour.
His research “The social life of small urban spaces” showed that with the right interventions, urban spaces can suddenly change in character and evoke different types of spontaneous use and behaviour.
Closer to home, the Dutchman Van Klingeren was also concerned with space and behaviour. His design for the Meerpaal and his ideas about 'de-clotting and the resulting nuisance' gave rise to a new look at the potential of the public space. Van Klingeren: “After all, hindrance is also a form of contact that can result in friendship, or in enmity and everything in between.”
Just two examples of many designers, researchers, etc. whose work we have studied. Part of our study was to test the “classic” design ideas in practice and to explore the differences with the present. Of course, the public space has changed with the introduction of the mobile phone. But, for example, the smoking ban and the introduction of LED lighting are also aspects that have been investigated.
We did this by doing action research on small audience behavior.
Architecture Day
On Architecture Day, visitors gather at the AIR office to participate to the excursions. By means of barrier tape, tape and verbal instructions from the queue buddy
atypical waiting situations were created.
The question was how visitors would react to the marking; is there interaction with other 'known unknowns' in the queue? Do other, unexpected social behavior arise? Is there
Is there social interaction and if so, what triggers it?
Location 1: Queue management at AIR
A long, illogical queue was marked with posts and barrier tape. This one was placed inside the office of AIR, to the box office where the tickets were sold. This intervention called clearly astonishment and sometimes even irritation among the visitors. This sometimes also led to rebellious
behaviour; people wondered aloud why they had to walk around like that and squeaked under the ribbons by means of. Visitors bought a ticket inside the office. In doing so, they were told outside in the marked box to wait for the excursion to start. This instruction was issued by the most people followed suit. Normally people keep their distance from each other because of their 'personal space' of approx. 1 mtr. to maintain around. Here it was at one point no longer possible because the waiting area was very compact. In addition to 'normal' waiting behavior such as looking around, checking the mobile phone, there was also social contact in the form of conversations between strangers, about the weather, the Day of the Architecture but also about the how and why of the intervention. The available seats were quickly occupied, after that visitors took a very compact position, also leaning against design elements such as the underground waste containers, even if these spread a unpleasant smell.
Conclusion:
People are apparently more sensitive to spoken instructions than to markings etc. In the last situation (the waiting area) 'the fear of missing out' may play a role ("I must stay nearby or else the excursion will leave without me"). Furthermore, it is noticeable that any form of nuisance – such as an unpleasant odor – is apparently not always an obstacle to staying in the public space, see also note after RdN.
Location 2: Chairs at the Fenixloodsen
At the Fenixloodsen, approximately 30 simple wooden chairs have been set up in a tape marked compartment. To what extent did this attitude invite spontaneous use and behaviour, and how far does the creativity of visitors and passers-by? The situations thus created have been recorded using of photos and time-lapse video.
The chairs set up on the Rijnhavenbrug invite you to stay. The view and watching people play an important role in this. The space between the Rijnbrug and the Fenixfoodfactory is a transition space. People are on their way to the Foodfactory or to the city. The chairs in different setups were used occasionally. Most of the time they were ignored or not as experienced seating possibility, rather as a barrier/object: it impeded the passage.
Route du Nord - formation 1
Route du Nord
During Route du Nord in and around the Zomerhofkwartier, we examined in two places how festival visitors and other passers-by reacted to chairs and benches on the sidewalk.
Especially for this public event we designed a series of special sofas and chairs based on the simple IKEA chair. We adapted this so that there are a number of models
were created, including a lounge chair and a sofa almost 6 meters long. In the designs we have taken into account the findings of the installations at the Day of Architecture.
We arranged the benches in different constellations. These were: an arrangement in which the benches and chairs did not block the sidewalk, but only invited it to be used; an arrangement in which the benches were more on the walkway, but visitors could maneuver around them well, even with several people; and finally an arrangement where the chairs and benches were arranged in such a way that it required the attention of the visitors to find a way.
Each arrangement led to different behaviour.
From the first round of experiments during Architecture Day, we learned that an important condition for a pleasant space is that people can stay there. Our
observation of the research location in Zomerhofstraat was that it was a transit space. A place where cars and bicycles (fast traffic) dominated. The research question therefore became: 'to what extent can passers-by be 'slowed down' and thereby be tempted to stay?'
Setup 1: For example, the first setup resulted in virtually no use. Passers-by only sat down once, but often only for a short period of time.
Constellation 2: the second constellation resulted in people having to pay visibly more attention to the constellations. It sometimes resulted in them taking longer to cover the same distance as the first lineup. This was the case only when people deliberately stopped at the chairs, when they chose to stand still (wait, as it were). With this arrangement, we saw more often that people chose to sit, touch the chairs and benches and/or to look at extensively.
Setup 3: in the third setup it became more difficult to walk through in one go. It led to two kinds of behavior. Firstly, that people more often sought an alternative route, for example by leaving the sidewalk and continuing their route via the road. Second, it more often caused people to slow down, had to divide their attention between walking through and the objects, and more often led to dwell behavior.
Route du Nord - formation 3