Spatial Cognition and Wayfinding in Architectural Design

Human spatial cognition underlies all processes of human wayfinding. Spatial cognition is a part of the interdisciplinary research area of cognitive science. Researchers from many disciplines, such as psychology, geography, computer science, linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, urban design, architecture, and neurobiology, investigate about the mind, reason, experience, and people’s general conceptualizations of the world in which they live (Lakoff 1980). Representation and processing of spatial information about the environment is an essential requirement of everyday cognition (Barkowsky, 2001). Montello (2001) defined 'Spatial Cognition' as 'the study of knowledge and beliefs about spatial properties of objects and events in the world'.

Spatial Reasoning is the cognitive process that translates implicit spatial information into explicit. According to this, complex spatial problem-solving processes like navigation and wayfinding tasks in architectural spaces entail spatial reasoning (cf. Freksa, 1992, Freksa et al., 1993). Spatial Action play a role when people are exploring or navigating in architectural spaces they must have capabilities to identify and classify the environment, to reason about it and to generate adequate actions for reaching their goals. This account for mental representations of the architectural spaces as well as reasoning methods to organize the spatial information. Characteristic of both spatial reasoning and spatial actions are cognitive mapping and path planning in, e.g. in complex buildings (cf. Freksa at al. 2003).

When we navigate through the built environment, and interact with it, we are continuously involved in the processing of spatial information. But how are we able to navigate within complex building layouts, learn of architectural settings, and explore multifaceted buildings effortlessly? Navigational space within architectural layouts enables us not only to move between places, but also helps to remind us of architectural landmarks, to integrate them into our mental representation of the place, and finally to situated us in the surrounding environment. The nature of the configuration of a path both influences and is influenced by the organizational pattern of the spaces it connects. Once we are able to map in our mind the configuration of paths within buildings, our understanding of the spatial layout, and thus our orientation will be clear.

Viewing a phenomenon from its opposite site often provides greater insights into its characteristics. According to the common research questions, such as 'which strategies people used to prefer to navigate within built environment and learn of architectural layouts?', as architects we inherently intend to explore the question from the opposite point of view, and thus, to analyze systematically the influence of spatial configuration and architectural form on people's navigation, from an architectural point of view.

Our hypothesis is, that there is valuably wayfinding expertise in the interdisciplinary research community of Spatial Cognition, that could optimizes methods for analyzing spatial layouts and for scientifically evaluating quantitative aspects of architectural design. To conceive the great influence that architectural design decisions have upon patterns of navigation and wayfinding it is necessary to investigate in the relationship between both, wayfinding cognition and architectural design methods. Further, we believe that useful design tools can support and assist architects during their work to optimize functional as well as quantitative spatial parameters of architectural design to give more design transpareneny for architects and clients, in future.

contact: Georg Vrachliotis

-- GeorgVrachliotis - 10 May 2005