معصومه مهرابي

The presence of people in medical spaces is always a stressful and anxiety-inducing experience, and this issue can affect the patient's health and the behavior of the companions and staff of the complex, ultimately affecting the patient's recovery process. One of the factors that increase this anxiety in medical spaces is the issue of finding the right path and reaching the desired destination in the shortest possible time and with the least number of errors and getting lost in the space. Medical buildings are designed and built with a complex and functional structure, regardless of the effect on the behavior of the people who are in contact with it. Due to the impact of such complexities of the physical environment on human senses and his behavior in space, as well as the possibility of people making mistakes in medical environments and in stressful mental conditions, the performance of people in these environments will be disturbed and the process of way finding will be difficult for them; Also, the smallest error in this process is very stressful for these people and can lead to difficult conditions for patients. For this reason, it is necessary to facilitate navigation, which is the most basic thing when people are present in medical environments, by appropriate design and reducing spatial complexities and increasing the legibility of the environment for these people. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of the physical environment and the configuration of the medical space, in the example of a clinic, on the way finding behavior of people present in this space, according to the indicators of space syntax and the way humans function in designed environments, and finally to achieve solutions for spatial design, with optimal way finding performance in it. In this regard, necessary measures are taken in 4 stages. First, by examining a library on the topic of way finding, the factors affecting it, including environmental (physical) factors and human factors, were identified. By examining the components affecting these factors, it was found that the physical environment can be examined from two dimensions, objective (building and its physics) and subjective (its impact on humans) on way finding behavior. In this way, indicators to eva‎luate these dimensions should have been proposed and investigated. In examining the objective dimension, the concept of space syntax is raised, and its related indicators are examined. In order to investigate the subjective dimension, there was a need to analyze the movement of humans in the context of the physical environment. Since this research is in the context of a medical space (clinic), the principles and criteria of communication were also investigated in this section. In the second stage, appropriate tools and methods were proposed for extracting data related to the desired indicators. In order to investigate the objective dimension, from the DepthmapX software, according to the space syntax indicators, connection and integration and depth data were extracted and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. In the subjective dimension, by placing humans in the virtual reality environment and analyzing their movement and way finding behavior by 7 factors of time, distance, number of errors, number of stops, stopping time, speed and the ratio of the traveled distance to the shortest distance, to the data, we got what we wanted. In the third stage, the overlap and communication between the data obtained from the analysis of the objective and subjective dimension of way finding, which is affected by the configuration, was discussed, and by comparing the data of all the case examples, solutions and rules were presented in order to design effectively in improving the way finding performance of people. In the fourth stage, the design based on these solutions and the re-analysis of the designed plan from the objective and subjective dimension of the way finding behavior using software and the movement of people in the environment were discussed in order to improve the way finding performance and prove the correctness of the research results. According to the obtained results, it can be said that the physical environment in the area of construction, plan typology and number of floors, from the point of view of space syntax, in order to increase readability, it is better to design it in such a way that spatial separation and respect for hierarchy are done well; In such a way that the overall depth of the space is reduced based on the spatial order, the main movement spaces have the highest degree of connection and the public spaces are placed at a lower depth. In determining the type of plan, it is better to use the main and secondary waiting halls and a main movement artery in order to establish access. Also, it is better to design the clinic space on one floor. The design of the physical environment should also be subject to rules in terms of the use of elements according to space syntax. In this regard, compliance with the locations of receptions (at a shallow depth and with a lot of connection and interconnection), signboards (at nodes and points with a lot of connection where there are a lot of selection indicators) and also the arrangement of furniture (in a way that leads to a increase in the legibility of the environment visual and physical access) is important. Observance of all these points leads to the improvement of people's way finding performance in the environment and reduces the number of errors, time and number of stops, distance traveled and total time spent to reach the destination.

مسيريابي , نحو فضا , محيط فيزيكي , پيكربندي , DepthmapX , كلينيك

way finding , space syntax , physical environment , configuration , DepthmapX , clinic

Masoumeh Mehrabi

Dr. Yazdanfar - Dr. Sahragard