| Title |
A Behavioral Study of Designing Gathering Places in Seoul Superblock Housing |
| Abstract |
In housing projects, architects too often begin the development of the design for an area by parceling out apartment building sites and turning whatever is left over into "open spaces" -plazas, parks, parking area, etc. Our housing projects have followed a tower-in-a-park design concept, where the existing streets are closed and superblocks formed to provide large expanses of open spaces for resident in the high-rises and slab-type buildings. The open spaces in these superblocks communicate a strong degree of change in that there is no quality of relatedness in the overal order of the existing urban neighborhood. Open spaces do not relate to any activity, and they are simply vast or sterile space designed only as foregrounds for buildings. Many superblock designs tend to embody the concept of equality for all dwelling units. All individual dwellings have the same relationship to the grounds and all residents share common, often unarticulated open space. Today the dilemma is that people living in buildings set in open spaces designed supposedly for them to walk in, stay in, and enjoy do not behave as the architects expected.Therefore, a key question to solve this problem and to improve the design qualiuty of housing project, addressed by this research is how a good "fit' between a physical environment and people's needs and their ability to care for it can be achieved. Architects crucially need this type of knowledge to reduce the gap between their intention of providing physical layouts that people enjoy and what they actually believe. This research provides an empirical demonstration of "territorial behavior" as an important component of neighborhood space design. The goals of this research are the following: 1.to explore and develop design principles to enhance the maintenance and usability of outdoor gathering places in urban residential neighborhoods; and2.to test the design principles by observing the role they play in influencing the degree of usability and maintenance of gatherinbg places in Seoul, Korea.The findings of this research indicate that a gathering place design that incorporates a full hierarchy of space among living units and the gathering place, and a defined territorial boundary with supportive amenities located in close juxtaposition to living units allows the greatest possible and most continuous control and surveillance, while giving locals a sense of pride. This results in the most use and voluntary maintenance, which is a suitable measure of a successful neighborhood gathering place. |