Conceptual Parametric Relationship for Occupants’ Domestic Environmental Experience

Abstract

Today’s architectural design approaches do not adequately address the relationship between users’ spatial, environmental and psychological experiences. Domestic environmental experience generally indicates users’ cognitive perceptions and physical responses within dwelling spaces. Therefore, without a clear perception of occupants’ experiences, it is difficult to identify proper architectural solutions for a domestic environment. To understand notions of these domestic experiences, the current study explores the theoretical relationship between spatial and environmental design factors within domestic settings which led to the concept of “Environmental Experience Design (EXD)”. Extensive data exploration was conducted using a combination of thirty keywords through different databases (e.g., Scopus, ScienceDirect, PubMed, Google Scholar, Mendeley and Research Gate) to categorise the relevant literature regarding thematic study areas such as human perception and phenomenology, environmental design and psychology, residential environment and design, health-wellbeing and user experiences. This study has identified theoretical associations between spatial and environmental design factors of different domestic spaces that can stimulate occupants’ satisfaction and comfort by reviewing eighty-seven studies from the literature. However, occupants’ contextual situations significantly impact domestic spaces, where spatial and environmental design attributes may be connected to diverse sociocultural factors. The scope of explanation about user context is limited, to some extent, in environmental design theories. Thus, combining occupants’ contexts with spatial and environmental design factors will be a future research direction used to explore the notion of “Domestic Environmental Experience Design”