Listen to thisIn last month’s column (see here) I identified purpose, interactivity, potential, control, physical movement and language (e.g. bedroom, kitchen, recreation area, office, etc) as dimensions (E. Hutchison, 2003) of the built environment*. In this month’s column I will discuss five more dimensions of the built environment and how those dimensions can be used as a means of influence in human service/child care work. These dimensions are location, comfort potential, aesthetic appeal, adaptability potential and crowding.
1. Location
Any space can be located in a facility related to its purpose. For
example a waiting room is usually located close to the outside of a
facility and its purpose is to act as an introduction to the facility.
But it also serves the function of “protecting“ the major players of
that facility , i.e. management, from too many intrusions to their work
and from too easy contact with the clients, the public and perhaps
irrelevant or burdensome others. Managements' offices thus tend to be
located in the middle of a facility or, the top floor of a facility – a
better view? Rarely if ever were managers located in the basement of a
facility. The lower reaches of a facility are typically used to store “stuff”, heating and plumbing machinery and occasionally new staff.
2. Comfort potential
Perhaps the most important aspect of the built environment is the extent
to which it has or facilitates appropriate mobility, heating, lighting,
sound barriers, and even smells. I did a consultation with a nursing
home a number of years ago and found myself repelled by the odors of
over or undercooked food that permeated everywhere in the facility. In
another example when I was a child protective service worker making a
visit to a problematic family the smell of a urine soaked mattress in
one of the children's bedrooms made me quite uncomfortable thereby
limiting my ability to focus on helping the family deal with their many
problems.
Without these considerations a built environment for troubled youth and staff can hardly be considered a liveable or productive work space especially for at-risk young people
3. Aesthetic appeal
This dimension of the built environment has to do with the
attractiveness implicit or explicit in the design or construction of
that environment. Even though most built environments throughout our
species history were “designed “to protect us from the elements and
enemies they usually – if not always – had aesthetic elements in their
construction. Witness the intrinsic beauty of the Eskimos igloo, the
neatness of the roundhouses of our northwest native Americans and the
attractiveness of the plains Indians tepees. So it is in our current
structure. We humans whether we live in preliterate cultures or in the
information age today, seem to have a strong need to beautify our built
environments (not to mention our bodies via face paint, lipstick,
tattoos, etc) and by so doing increase our connection to them. “People
have attachments to places as well as to people”.
4. Adaptability potential
A key dimension in a facility is the extent to which its space can be
adapted to the needs of its users. Can spaces within a facility be
modified to better fit the residents who live there? For example in a
facility serving physically handicapped residents, can a door opening be
enlarged or a three foot ramp added for wheelchair use? Or can a
bathroom be modified to help handicapped or elderly residents make easy
use of that space? Or can a wall be relocated to accommodate the
changing needs of a child care facility when staff/management decides to
give each child their own room instead of sharing a room with one or
more other children?
5. Crowding
This dimension deals with the extent to which a space has too many
people (feels crowded) or objects for its size and height (feels
cluttered). A famous study (J. Calhoun, 1962) describes the powerful
negative affect of crowding on a group of rats confined to a cage.
* The built environment brought humans indoors with at least one implication i.e. that dawn no longer wakes us and darkness no longer gets us to sleep. Society now measures time by its own doings rather than natures doings.
References
Most of the dimensions discussed this month and last are taken from:
Hutchinson, E. in her book Human Behavior and
The Social Environment. 2003.
Calhoun, J. in Population Density and Social Pathology (1962).
Scientific American, 206, Feb.
