Cognition Meets Le Corbusier-Cognitive Principles of Architectural Design

Research on human spatial memory and navigational ability has recently shown the strong influence of reference systems in spatial memory on the ways spatial information is accessed in navigation and other spatially oriented tasks. One of the main findings can be characterized as a large cognitive cost, both in terms of speed and accuracy that occurs whenever the reference system used to encode spatial information in memory is not aligned with the reference system required by a particular task. In this paper, the role of aligned and misaligned reference systems is discussed in the context of the built environment and modern architecture. The role of architectural design on the perception and mental representation of space by humans is investigated. The navigability and usability of built space is systematically analysed in the light of cognitive theories of spatial and navigational abilities of humans. It is concluded that a building’s navigability and related wayfinding issues can benefit from architectural design that takes into account basic results of spatial cognition research. 1 Wayfinding and Architecture Life takes place in space and humans, like other organisms, have developed adaptive strategies to find their way around their environment. Tasks such as identifying a place or direction, retracing one’s path, or navigating a large-scale space, are essential elements to mobile organisms. Most of these spatial abilities have evolved in natural environments over a very long time, using properties present in nature as cues for spatial orientation and wayfinding. With the rise of complex social structure and culture, humans began to modify their natural environment to better fit their needs. The emergence of primitive dwellings mainly provided shelter, but at the same time allowed builders to create environments whose spatial structure “regulated” the chaotic natural environment. They did this by using basic measurements and geometric relations, such as straight lines, right angles, etc., as the basic elements of design (Le Corbusier, 1931, p. 69ff.) In modern society, most of our lives take place in similar regulated, human-made spatial environments, with paths, tracks, streets, and hallways as the main arteries of human locomotion. Architecture and landscape architecture embody the human effort to structure space in meaningful and useful ways. Architectural design of space has multiple functions. Architecture is designed to satisfy the different representational, functional, aesthetic, and emotional needs of organizations and the people who live or work in these structures. In this chapter, emphasis lies on a specific functional aspect of architectural design: human wayfinding. Many approaches to improving architecture focus on functional issues, like improved ecological design, the creation of improved workplaces, better climate control, lighting conditions, or social meeting areas. Similarly, when focusing on the mobility of humans, the ease of wayfinding within a building can be seen as an essential function of a building’s design (Arthur & Passini, 1992; Passini, 1984). When focusing on wayfinding issues in buildings, cities, and landscapes, the designed spatial environment can be seen as an important tool in achieving a particular goal, e.g., reaching a destination or finding an exit in case of emergency. This view, if taken to a literal extreme, is summarized by Le Corbusier’s (1931) notion of the building as a “machine,” mirroring in architecture the engineering ideals of efficiency and functionality found in airplanes and cars. In the narrow sense of wayfinding, a building thus can be considered of good design if it allows easy and error-free navigation. This view is also adopted by Passini (1984), who states that “although the architecture and the spatial configuration of a building generate the wayfinding problems people have to solve, they are also a wayfinding support system in that they contain the information necessary to solve the problem” (p. 110). Like other problems of engineering, the wayfinding problem in architecture should have one or more solutions that can be evaluated. This view of architecture can be contrasted with the alternative view of architecture as “built philosophy”. According to this latter view, architecture, like art, expresses ideas and cultural progress by shaping the spatial structure of the world – a view which gives consideration to the users as part of the philosophical approach but not necessarily from a usability perspective. Viewing wayfinding within the built environment as a “man-machine-interaction” problem makes clear that good architectural design with respect to navigability needs to take two factors into account. First, the human user comes equipped with particular sensory, perceptual, motoric, and cognitive abilities. Knowledge of these abilities and the limitations of an average user or special user populations thus is a prerequisite for good design. Second, structural, functional, financial, and other design considerations restrict the degrees of freedom architects have in designing usable spaces. In the following sections, we first focus on basic research on human spatial cognition. Even though not all of it is directly applicable to architectural design and wayfinding, it lays the foundation for more specific analyses in part 3 and 4. In part 3, the emphasis is on a specific research question that recently has attracted some attention: the role of environmental structure (e.g., building and street layout) for the selection of a spatial reference frame. In part 4, implications for architectural design are discussed by means of two real-world examples. 2 The human user in wayfinding 2.1 Navigational strategies Finding one’s way in the environment, reaching a destination, or remembering the location of relevant objects are some of the elementary tasks of human activity. Fortunately, human navigators are well equipped with an array of flexible navigational strategies, which usually enable them to master their spatial environment (Allen, 1999). In addition, human navigation can rely on tools that extend human sensory and mnemonic abilities. Most spatial or navigational strategies are so common that they do not occur to us when we perform them. Walking down a hallway we hardly realize that the optical and acoustical flows give us rich information about where we are headed and whether we will collide with other objects (Gibson, 1979). Our perception of other objects already includes physical and social models on how they will move and where they will be once we reach the point where paths might cross. Following a path can consist of following a particular visual texture (e.g., asphalt) or feeling a handrail in the dark by touch. At places where multiple continuing paths are possible, we might have learned to associate the scene with a particular action (e.g., turn left; Schölkopf & Mallot, 1995), or we might try to approximate a heading direction by choosing the path that most closely resembles this direction. When in doubt about our path we might ask another person or consult a map. As is evident from this brief (and not exhaustive) description, navigational strategies and activities are rich in diversity and adaptability (for an overview see Golledge, 1999; Werner, Krieg-Brückner, & Herrmann, 2000), some of which are aided by architectural design and signage (see Arthur & Passini, 1992; Passini, 1984). Despite the large number of different navigational strategies, people still experience problems finding their way or even feel lost momentarily. This feeling of being lost might reflect the lack of a key component of human wayfinding: knowledge about where one is located in an environment – with respect to one’s goal, one’s starting location, or with respect to the global environment one is in. As Lynch put it, “the terror of being lost comes from the necessity that a mobile organism be oriented in its surroundings” (1960, p. 125.) Some wayfinding strategies, like vector navigation, rely heavily on this information. Other strategies, e.g. piloting or path-following, which are based on purely local information can benefit from even vague locational knowledge as a redundant source of information to validate or question navigational decisions (see Werner et al., 2000, for examples.) Proficient signage in buildings, on the other hand, relies on a different strategy. It relieves a user from keeping track of his or her position in space by indicating the correct navigational choice whenever the choice becomes relevant. Keeping track of one’s position during navigation can be done quite easily if access to global landmarks, reference directions, or coordinates is possible. Unfortunately, the built environment often does not allow for simple navigational strategies based on these types of information. Instead, spatial information has to be integrated across multiple places, paths, turns, and extended periods of time (see Poucet, 1993, for an interesting model of how this can be achieved). In the next section we will describe an essential ingredient of this integration – the mental representation of spatial information in memory. 2.2 Alignment effects in spatial memory When observing tourists in an unfamiliar environment, one often notices people frantically turning maps to align the noticeable landmarks depicted in the map with the visible landmarks as seen from the viewpoint of the tourist. This type of behavior indicates a well-established cognitive principle (Levine, Jankovic, & Palij, 1982). Observers more easily comprehend and use information depicted in “You-are-here” (YAH) maps if the up-down direction of the map coincides with the front-back direction of the observer. In this situation, the natural preference of directional mapping of top to front and bottom to back is used, and left and right in the map stay left and right in the depicted world. While th