Environmental Atmosphere: Outdoor Environmental Assessments for Design and Education

Abstract: The primary goal of this thesis was to develop an Expert checklist for assessing and de-veloping outdoor residential environments. The checklist was utilized by 5 experts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning who were all fa-miliar with the concept of architectural psychology. The checklist was validated against a Post-occupancy evaluations form (POE) that was developed especially for this purpose. The POE was administered to over 400 residents in Lund, Sweden, and rendered five factors, Attachment, Outdoor Enjoyment, Aesthetics, Sustainability, and Social Interaction. By means of the checklist it was possible to predict the first three of these five factors. Further studies using the Expert checklist showed that the form could be used in a cross-cultural context. Twenty-two planning professionals, who came from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America, participated. A test was also performed to discover if cultural differences would affect the way the built environments were assessed. Additional studies were preformed to expand the usefulness of the Expert checklist by evaluating two recent large-scale housing areas that had been developed and organized as housing exhibitions within southern Sweden. Six experts in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture utilized the checklist to assess these two new and innovative areas. Finally, the checklist was used in a course for architecture students and the outcome in-dicates that using this tool can enhance the understanding of the students related to the needs of end users, specifically regarding their outdoor environment. The thesis consists of five studies incorporated into four papers which are all related to the development of the Expert checklist. The five studies have shown that the checklist is a valid and reliable method for assessing the outdoor environment in order to identify essential environmental qualities that individual’s desire as well as a useful tool for teaching architecture students about these qualities.