Building Ecology: Examining Space-Place Dynamics in a Shared Indoor Environment

Buildings are important. Americans alone spend approximately 87% of their lives in buildings, living and working. Driven by new ambitions and technologies, buildings are increasingly designed to encourage certain behaviors like movement and collaboration, to promote desired outcomes like creativity and community, and to interact directly with users. People design and build spaces in the hope that they become Places (deeply meaningful environments). But our understanding of the space-to-place process is poor. 

This NSF-funded project examines space-place dynamics in a shared indoor environment within a new mixed academic-residential building on Virginia Tech’s campus. Our foundational question: How does space become place in a shared indoor environment with diverse users? Our guiding hypothesis is that place-making is stochastic. Data collection includes ethnographic and survey-based social science approaches integrated with a comprehensive lidar and sensor-based data collection system.

The primary broader impacts of this research will involve two main concerns: developing a smart infrastructure living-laboratory; and communicating widely through training and education. First, our sensor-based system will establish a smart and connected living-laboratory with the potential to connect to other projects on campus and beyond. Also, we plan to add simple instruments (e.g., projectors and speakers) to our system to enable data-driven and immersive works of creative expression, creating a smart and connected living studio.