architecture, sustainable urban design, built environment and mental health, UCSD, Ohlone Community College.
I picked this topic since my future interest after graduation is to get a masters in architecture and i have always been interested in the different types of architecture that surround our daily lives and how we are influenced by them. We are completely surrounded by architecture there is no way to escape it, everything we do is determined by the built environment around us, not being impacted by it is impossible. It shapes who we are and end up becoming, and so I want to explore this relationship through academics. This topic impacts everyone, as it is around us every day, and every moment. By the end of this study, I hope to give myself and others a better understanding of the importance of architecture and why we should give it more significance then it is currently getting.
Davis, Mike. “Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Proletariat”. New Left Review, Vol. 26. March/April 2004.
Evans, Gary. “The Built Environment and Mental Health”, Journal of Urban Health, The New York Academy of Medicine. (2003) Vol 80, No. 4.
Lee, Evelyn. “UCSD Unveils Striking New Student Housing Building”, Inhabity Publishing. 2010.
Louv, Richard. “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.” New York: Workman Publishing, 2005.
Moore, Gary. “Architecture and Human Behavior: The Place of Environment-Behavior studies in Architecture”. University of Wisconsin, 1979.
Orlowski, Mark. “New College Sustainability Report Card 2008 released”, Its getting hot in here daily reader. March 2005.
Smith, Elizabeth Orsega and Andrew Mowen, Laura Payne, Geoffrey Godbey, “The Interaction of Stress and Park Use on Psycho-physiological Health in Older Adults”, Questia, Trusted online research journal. (2004) Vol 36.
Sokol, David. “Going for a Spin: Enthalpy wheels flood the Ohlone College Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology with fresh air”, Green Soure Magazine article journal, 2010.
Vitruvius, Pollio. “De Architecture: Ten Books on Architecutre”, Digireads Publishing, 2000.
“UCSD by Design’ Series Celebrates Campus Art and Architecture at 50”, Achieving the Extraordinary, UCSD Campus Flyer, 2010.
Zastrow, Charles. Kirst-Ashman, Karen. “Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment”. Eithth Edition, Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning, 2010.
http://www.ohlone.edu/newarkcenter
http://www.ucsd.edu/physicalplanning
All architecture around us has great impact on who we are today, including our mental health. One of the earliest surviving pieces of work on the matter of architecture is Vitruvius’s De architecture, where he clearly advocates the up rising of architecture due to public mental and physical health. Before World War II, architecture’s main focus was aimed towards public health and adapting and changing it to better human wellbeing; somewhere along the years this idea of architecture and public wellbeing going hand in hand faded. My research’s main focus is about architecture and its impact on mental health, which will contribute to the general research and discussion on this matter by looking at specific facilities in particular two types, education and recreational areas located in San Diego County and Alameda County. Vitruvius defines mental health as the a persons emotions, feelings, mental abilities, which I will be looking at in accordance to my case study’s to study the relationship between the built environment and its negative/positive impacts. This research will contribute to the importance of sustainable development for the betterment of humanity’s mental health.
This research project examines the importance of architecture in our daily lives through the change from pre-modernist architecture to modernist (sustainable) architecture. Current research suggests sustainable architecture is not only environmentally friendly but also has a very positive impact on human behavior. This research is a comparative study looking at two different educational facilities, University of California San Diego and Ohlone Community College, of which both consist of pre-modernist architecture and sustainable architecture. Through surveys, observational comparative research, and a few interviews, the impact both types of architecture has on current students is analyzed; the findings show sustainable architecture being more suitable in the learning experience and personal growth of the students.
For my senior sequence research project, I take a look at the impact architecture has on our everyday lives, more specifically college students at UCSD and Ohlone Community college in relation to pre-modernist architecture and sustainable architecture also known as modernist architecture. I take 100 surveys on each campus, 50 located in pre-modernist areas, and the other 50 located in sustainable architecture areas. By an over whelming consensus, students believed sustainable architecture has a better impact on their college experience and who they are becoming. Majority of them who were constantly surrounded my pre-modernist architecture stated they would not spend as much time on campus as those student surrounded and interacting with sustainable architecture. When surveying, the difference between the two groups of students and their ora was immense those interacting with sustainable architecture was an increase in their study habits and grades and also saw a difference in their behaviors and attitudes in their everyday lives. The impact our built environment has on us is vast, it should be taken more importantly in our everyday lives. Sustainable architecture is a growing industry and should be implemented to better human behaviors, health and general lives.
The evidence I plan to do, to back up my research topic will consist of observation, interviews, surveys, and searching an online grades database. My observations will consist of my first creating a list of certain aspects that make up a positive/negative architectural learning environment. Through some more extensive research through literary sources, and articles I will have a list to refer to when I go through UCSD campus, and Ohlone Community College’s campuses, analyzing each building and taking notes of each aspect on the list. Which with the UCSD information I will be able to create a border around fairly late built part of campus and the new built part of the campus. Also, I will be then analyze the information and create certain overall observations giving a sense of each campus and its relation to its architecture. As for the interviews, I plan to interview UCSD’s Planning Office, the professor that it currently teaching Land Use Planning, and OCC’s planners of the newer campus, and the planning office of the older campus. To get a sense of why each campus was built the way it was, and their sense on how their architecture and plans for the campuses have influenced the learning capabilities of the students. The surveys will serve as the student’s views on this matter. My goal is to get a big amount of surveys from both campuses depending on population size to get the majority view rather then a small group. Survey’s on UCSD will be done on both sides of the boundary in a couple different spots to get a variety of different students, and for OCC, surveys will be done on both campuses again in a couple different spots to get a variety of different students. Hopefully resulting in the conclusion of that the schools architecture has a impact on the way they learn, and begin to think. The side built to more sustainable needs impacts the mind in a better way, bettering ones mental health. As for the online sustainable grade data base, my plans are to go through a number of universities on the site with certain aspects that I find from the precious case studies that negatively or positively impact mental health, and compile the grades they get in that aspects, and then pair them up with their grades preferably from two different time periods to show the increase in grades, and compare them to lower sustainable university grades. Hoping that the universities with the higher grades in sustainability, and academic grades are significantly higher then the universities with the negatives, proving the point that architecture has tremendous influence and should be given more importance. As a plan B, if I am unable to get certain interviews, I plan to go down that ladder, as in start contacting professors or other people having some sort of connection to my research to interview, and if this has no results, then give more focus to the survey portion of this research and double my amount of surveys being done, as less time will be focused on interviews. This applies to all the research I plan do to, if one does not go as planned, go to the next best one and maximize that part of the research.
A spatial element in the research that I am doing is that it begs to ask how important architecture really is in every day life. Does the built environment that we create really have that much of an influence on us to shape the way we are and will become? This research gives rise to the importance of architecture and its value in our everyday lives. Mainly focusing in on the educational aspect, my research looks at how architecture impacts behaviors and mental health in an learning environment. Through interaction with students and members of the planning team from each campus hopefully this relationship between humans and architecture helps give rise to its importance.
Copyright © 2009 USP Student Research all rights reserved
Site Designed By Digital Mud Studio