Lived experiences in our open spaces : investigating impacts and influences on personal and collective behaviour

Abstract

Once a space is designed and finished, it must be embraced by its users in order to become a meaningful and lived-in place. The objectives of the study were to understand the factors that impact people’s use of certain open spaces, through documenting their current behaviour, as well as through traces of past actions, with the eventual aim of formulating thematic links to answer the two research questions: ‘How do the design and layout of open spaces influence the way people interact with those spaces and with other people within those spaces?’ and ‘How do people make designed open spaces their own, imbue them with meaning and transform them into places?’. Three main research methods were employed over the course of this study, being the formulation of a literature review, a series of semi-structured interviews, and fieldwork carried out across three chosen sites. Through the comparison of data gathered through the three main research methods, the comparison between literature and fieldwork indicated that the users of the three spaces participated in an increased number of activities throughout the day when the design of the space allowed for flexibility of use and provided a variety of differentiated qualities to the space. Here, the individual users could make the best use of the sites based on their ever-shifting needs and value systems, eventually leading to the formation of new rituals and traditions, and the imbuing of these public places with added layers of value and meaning. The main conclusions of the study were that through the inclusion of flexibility, a variety of potential uses, and the possibility for multiple demographics to make use of that open space alongside each other throughout all times of day, the resulting varied and dynamic spaces can greatly increase the opportunity for users to exercise their agency and appropriate those spaces, supporting different uses and activities, and transforming what was a built up space into a lived-in public place.