Thesis. 1978. M.Arch.A.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / Bibliography: leaves 117-118. / M.Arch.A.S.

Cheung Chee Ming. / "Architecture Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master of Architecture Programme 2004-2005, design report." / Introduction / Proposal / Observation / Exploration . Design / Appendix

Bibliography: leaves 381-418. Examines the actions of ordinary people within a city landscape with the major focus on the politics of meaning and culture in cities . Case studies are drawn from Adelaide.

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people�s emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether changes in physical space impacted preschool children's cooperative behavior. These changes in physical space included differentiated and undifferentiated ceiling height and wall color. This study used an experimental design with subjects experiencing four conditions each. The sample consisted of 30 preschool children across four different half-day preschool classes in a preschool laboratory on a university campus. Children were assigned to small groups of four children. Each group was comprised of two boys and two girls. The groups experienced each condition for five minutes each week over a four-week period. A multivariate repeated-measures analysis was used to determine whether the predictor variables: age, gender, and condition, were related to the outcome variable of cooperative behavior. There was a significant main effect for Condition on children's cooperative behavior. Post-hoc comparisons revealed the cooperative behavior scores of children in the condition with a differentiated ceiling and an undifferentiated wall color to be significantly higher than all other conditions. A polynomial contrast revealed a nonlinear relationship between the conditions. Additionally, older children were more cooperative than younger children. Boys were more cooperative than girls. In differentiated spaces, whether in ceiling height or in wall color, children's cooperative behavior scores increased. Physical spaces where ceiling height and wall color were both undifferentiated or differentiated appeared to depress children's cooperative behavior scores. The undifferentiated space may have not been stimulating enough to enhance children's cooperative behavior, while the space with both differentiation in the ceiling height and wall color may have been overstimulating for preschool children. Administrators and planners of children's play spaces must be aware of how overly simple or highly complex environments can negatively impact on children's development. / Graduation date: 1997

This thesis proposes a model of understanding the constraining effect of floorplates on the integration of office layouts. The proposed model is based on the analysis of floorplates and layouts which is simultaneously configurational, global and robust. The study departs from two observations: first, there is a difference between the lifespan of shells and layouts; second, shells influence but do not determine the layouts than can be accommodated in them. The thesis proposes two descriptions of shape which gauge their compactness and convex fragmentation based on configurational relations among modular units of shape. Shapes of actual floorplates are described according to the proposed measures leading to a typology of office buildings. The space syntax research on workspaces has demonstrated that the integration of layout circulation affects the patterns of movement, encounter and interaction, which are linked to organizational performance. Actual layouts are described according to skewness and density of connectivity of linear maps leading to three alternative types of office layouts: sparse grids, dense grids and fishbones. Two ideal layouts of grids and fishbones, extracted from the typology, reflect opposing ways of increasing the layout integration and best represent open-plan layouts. Experiments with hypothetical grids and fishbones generated systematically on theoretical shapes demonstrate strong but differing effects of shape on layout integration. These are subsequently confirmed by the analysis of hypothetical grids and fishbones generated into a large sample of actual office buildings in the US. The relationship between floorplate shape and layout is mediated by the generative principle applied to the generation of layout. There exists an underlying congruence between a morphological typology of layouts (which distinguishes between fishbone and grid as alternative principles for increasing integration) and a morphological typology of shapes (which distinguishes between more compact and convexly unified shapes and shapes with wings). The findings highlight the distinction between constraint and determination. Floorplate shapes exercise underlying constraints upon the layout integration but they do not determine it. The proposed model enhances the evaluation of existing building portfolios for their suitability for different types of office layouts and aids the design and planning of new work environments.

Thesis (M.A.)--Washington State University. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.U.D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-87).

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy