Abstract
This paper is an attempt to advance research on spatial potential for interdisciplinary innovation of university campuses by proposing a spatial quantitative method. The aim is to develop the campus to adapt to the new pedagogical structure of encouraging interdisciplinary innovation in the era of knowledge society. For this purpose, literature from management, psychology, and architecture are reviewed to provide insight into the relationship between innovation and physical environment. The existing research mainly focused on the characteristics of physical environment that supported individual innovative thinking or innovative interaction between people in building scale, which is relatively limited in this study for the campus scale since people are less likely to exchange academic information with strangers because of a lack of knowledge about their professional background. In this context, this research enriches the understanding of spatial potential for innovation by proposing a more effective way of increasing unexpected encounters with information, which are probably occurred while people passing by laboratories, seminars, or exhibitions of other disciplines. In this process, the unexpected encounters with information act as the medium or promotion factor for face-to-face interaction. This kind of innovative potential requires fewer conditions like acquaintance or face-to-face interaction but depends more on the space organization. Physical connectivity acts as enabler and the effects vary. This article reports on a preliminary study of how Space Syntax as a quantitative approach is applied to evaluate the effects in the case of South China University of Technology. The proposed method aims to sustain a sustainable transition toward a more adaptable relation between people and the campus environment. However, to improve understanding of spatial effects on innovation, more empirical studies must be carried out.
Highlights
In the era of knowledge society, universities are expected to evolve from performing conventional research and education functions to adapting to the new pedagogical structure of encouraging interdisciplinary innovation
Since there is a near-universal agreement within the social and architectural literature on the importance that physical environment plays in the innovation process (Allen, 1977; Hillier and Penn, 1991; Penn and Hillier, 1992; Van den Bulte and Moenaert, 1998; Clements-Croome, 2006; Wineman et al, 2009; Stryker et al, 2011; Oksanen and Ståhle, 2013), restructuring the existing campus to achieve the goal of promoting interdisciplinary innovation is a sustainable transition toward a more adaptable relation between people and the campus environment
The purpose of this paper is to explore the spatial possibility for interdisciplinary innovation in the context of university campuses and apply space syntax to construct a spatial quantitative method for innovation-driven renovation
Summary
In the era of knowledge society, universities are expected to evolve from performing conventional research and education functions to adapting to the new pedagogical structure of encouraging interdisciplinary innovation. According to the contrastive analysis of calculated results of normalized choice at radius 1,200 m, both the average value and frequency distribution reveal that scheme B performs better than scheme A on global scale of the campus, indicating that organizing direct routes across the site to enhance the existing network based on the real movement performance is a relatively effective spatial strategy for innovation-driven development on global scale of the campus. The difference of minimum and maximum value between two schemes is relatively distinct, which means that both the most integrated and segregated spaces in scheme B perform much better than scheme A This analysis of local scale shows that the number of connections between isolated buildings is admittedly meaningful, but the effect on innovative promotion by increasing through-movement has much to do with how the connections are organized. Constructing spaces along the connective corridors to enhance the connection leads to better performance than merely connective corridors between different buildings
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