Students Exploration on Campus Legibility

Abstract

University Campuses are significant functional areas of cities. Successfully designed campuses help to balance university's academic, research and service missions with its educational services and raise learning performances. Campuses’ high level of design and planning service has close relation with its legibility. Kevin Lynch, one of the leading theorists who had research on place legibility used cognitive mapping as a tool and defined five fundamental elements, have great influence on place legibility. In this study, Black Sea Technical University is selected as the research area and its legibility level has determined. Aim of this study is to define the legibility level of the campus by students perceptions. In this context, Lynch's five fundamental legibility elements directed students to generate cognitive maps of the campus, and each student's perception level on campus area is determined. Respondent group include students from Architecture, and Urban and Regional Planning departments have contributed this study. End product is the analysis of the cognitive maps, produced by each student, based on legibility elements. The result of the analysis legibility map of the campus has created, and the legibility level of the campus area is determined. Following, the results are classified as the areas with high, medium and low cognition. Finally, possibility of raising university's educational and research activities through design are discussed.