The Effect of the Relationship between Indoor Architectural Design Studios and Outdoor Landscape on Increasing Students’ Satisfaction Level

Abstract

The environmental factors in the educational spaces along with the other factors affect the teaching and learning process. One of the characteristics of environmental space is the type of relationship of each space with its outdoor space. This factor is more important, especially in the spaces where students spend long hours such as architectural design studios. Nowadays, outdoor spaces in academic environments provide functions like accessing to closed spaces and various buildings and creating their relationship. In this regard, the visual function is considered as another important function, which is often overlooked and less considered and created by the outdoor environments for indoor closed spaces. The main question is related to whether the type of the relationship between the closed space of the architectural design studio and the outdoor natural space is considered as an important factor in achieving students’ satisfaction with long hours working in this space based on the attention restoration theory or not. The present study aimed to examine the effect of the relationship between the indoor spaces of architectural design studios and outdoor environment on increasing students’ satisfaction. This research was conducted by combining the quantitative and qualitative methods. The population included 65 students majoring in architecture, who experienced designing classes in all three studied studios. This research compared three architectural design studios with different conditions of proximity and outward view. The research data were analyzed with SPSS software. The results indicated that the open and diverse outdoor natural landscape was more effective factor in increasing students’ satisfaction rather than among the various factors influencing the type of relationship between the studios and the outdoor space. Accordingly, designing the university landscape from the indoor closed spaces should be considered more, especially in spaces such as studios due to the long hours of attending and working of students.