An enabling technique for describing experiences in architectural environments

Abstract

Experience is everything that appears to consciousness during the encounter of a human being with an environment. A survey that helps people introspect about their place experience and capture that experience through words will be presented. The Environmental Description Survey is an enabling technique in which participants first comment about their experiences by completing a series of sentences, e.g., related to their liking for some architectural element (qualitative part of the survey), and then they are asked to rate their experiences in a 1–10 scale; e.g., How much do you like that architectural element? (quantitative part). The survey is answered after the participants have made an exploratory itinerary in the environment but still being in that environment. The most frequent experiences presented to 35 participants who visited an architecturally relevant area of the Santa Lucía Riverwalk in Monterrey, Mexico, were discovered through the survey. In addition to the frequency of the commented experiences, the quantitative data obtained correspond to the intensity of the experiences, the personal importance they had for the participants, and the chronological order in which they were presented during the visit to the place. The results obtained through the survey reveal the possibilities of experience that an architectural environment can generate in people. The hybrid technique presented also allows to discover the more relevant aspects of a place related to environmental preferences. Considering the data obtained through this technique during an architectural or landscape design may result in places capable of generating positive human experiences.