Spatial contexts, permeability, and visibility in relation to learning experiences in contemporary academic architecture

This phenomenological study identifies key morphological properties of spatial configurations in two contemporary educational buildings---the William Johnston Building at Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida) and the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University (Waltham, Massachusetts)---and analyzes, through the combined use of Space Syntax and ethnographic research methods, how spatial structure and its permeability, and visibility properties affect educational and learning activities, social interactions, and ultimately shape users' [learning] experiences. At present, these buildings are representative of the prevailing academic and educational paradigms, which include: interdisciplinarity; decreasing importance of hierarchies between academic disciplines and academic activities; a de-emphasis on hierarchical divisions between faculty and students; and an increased role of hybrid social/learning environments for student and faculty use. In keeping with these trends, the design of the two buildings reflects a shift towards accessorizing the traditional classroom and office components of educational buildings with physically and functionally flexible spaces with under-defined programmatic designations.;Although these two buildings share some significant syntactic qualities---voluminous atria, overall linearity, and high levels of visual accessibility in the most public spaces---the structures differ to an extent sufficient to draw conclusions about the import of a range of spatial characteristics on learner responses. The quantitative analysis of the spatial properties of the two buildings combined with the consideration of observational and user interview data collected at each facility yielded a number of significant findings, including: (1) that spatial morphology strongly influences the types of programmed or un-programmed educational, social or scholarly activities taking place; (2) that space users' activities and learning experiences are framed and directed by properties of permeability and visibility within educational buildings' spatial configuration; (3) that visibility effects space users on three essential levels---spatial awareness, navigation, and in decision-making about appropriate uses of spaces; (4) that highly visible structural elements (atria) play a major role in shaping visibility relations, while having little effect on permeability; (5) that the more morphologically divided and dispersed spaces are, or less permeable and less visually accessible they are, the greater chance that the space users will also be divided into smaller groups; (6) that the level of face-to-face interaction among space users is heavily determined by spatial factors, programmatic and functional factors, and extracurricular event programming; and (7) the separation of functional zones (i.e. spaces in which intended activities and uses are well defined) creates conditions for greater flexibility within those zones.;These formal findings combine to substantiate a number of observations about the influence of spatial characteristics on educational experience, central of which are: (1) the premise that spaces that invite and support unintentional individual and social experiences in learners facilitate the formation of `transitional environments' wherein the learner may unintentionally and involuntarily transition into a learning state; and (2) that a building's spatial configuration, including visibility and permeability characteristics, can play an important role in supporting and forming social communities within that building, thus realizing the idea that educational environments may be open-ended and encouraging to social interactions, or may inhibit the formation of communities.;In sum, through the merging of computational spatial analysis data with the personal perceptions, assessments, feelings and experiences of study participants, this investigation explores the potential for introducing the qualitative data of the learner and the learner's social milieu into alignment with the quantitative data achieved through space syntax analysis, and thereby provides a new methodological resource with which to consider the design of educational architecture.