Building Ecology: Examining Space/Place Dynamics in a Shared Indoor Environment

This project examines building interiors to identify how spaces become meaningful places in a shared indoor environment with diverse users. It provides geographic insights on the ways that design thinking drives the distribution of valuable resources (e.g., light, furniture, electronics) within buildings, how diverse occupants use resources and attach meaning to them, how resource use is also determined by other social and environmental variables, and how these relationships are affected by resilience to disruptions.

This project builds on theories from geographical sciences, cultural anthropology, complex systems science, computer vision, architecture, and mathematics. Its data collection system establishes a smart and connected living-laboratory with potential to extend to other projects. This project also supports interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate education and multiple forms of public communication.

This project contributes to a growing area of research that addresses the social value of buildings. In the United States, individuals spend high amounts of time living and working indoors. As a result, buildings are increasingly designed to promote certain behaviors such as movement, collaboration, creativity, and community.

Spaces are designed and built with hopes that they become meaningful places to the people that use them, but conceptual understandings of the space-to-place process remains underdeveloped. Therefore, this longitudinal project examines this process within a mixed residential/academic building that serves diverse functions. Using multiple methods that include sensor-based technologies, interviews, and qualitative ethnography, the researchers have multiple objectives.

First, the research examines how spaces and resources are conceptualized, created, and distributed by administrators and designers. In addition, the researchers study when and where resources are used, and what symbolic meanings are associated with their use. The study also examines how the uses and meanings related to spaces respond to disruptions in the patterns of use.

The results of this work can help administrators and designers to create more human-centric shared indoor spaces with greater potential to facilitate positive outcomes. The project also contributes to student training and broadening participation in science.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.