Exportar Publicação

Guerreiro, Maria Rosália, Guarda, I., Valério Medeiros & Loureiro, Vânia (2015). Seeing, standing and sitting: the architecture of copresence in small urban spaces. In Eds. Alves, F. B. e Cruz, S. S., Faculdade de Engenharia do Porto, Porto (Ed.), Proceedings Citta 8th Annual Conference on Planning Research on Planning Research / AESOP TG Public Spaces & Urban Cultures. Porto

M. R. Guerreiro et al.,  "Seeing, standing and sitting: the architecture of copresence in small urban spaces", in Proc. Citta 8th Annu. Conf. on Planning Research on Planning Research / AESOP TG Public Spaces & Urban Cultures, Eds. Alves, F. B. e Cruz, S. S., Faculdade de Engenharia do Porto, Porto, Ed., Porto, 2015

@inproceedings{guerreiro2015_1781147187234,
	author = "Guerreiro, Maria Rosália and Guarda, I. and Valério Medeiros and Loureiro, Vânia",
	title = "Seeing, standing and sitting: the architecture of copresence in small urban spaces",
	booktitle = "Proceedings Citta 8th Annual Conference on Planning Research on Planning Research / AESOP TG Public Spaces & Urban Cultures",
	year = "2015",
	editor = "Eds. Alves, F. B. e Cruz, S. S., Faculdade de Engenharia do Porto, Porto",
	volume = "",
	number = "",
	series = "",
	doi = "10.13140/RG.2.1.3680.1045",
	publisher = "",
	address = "Porto",
	organization = "CITTA | Faculdade de Engenharia do Porto",
	url = "http://citta-conference.fe.up.pt/conference-program"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Seeing, standing and sitting: the architecture of copresence in small urban spaces
T2  - Proceedings Citta 8th Annual Conference on Planning Research on Planning Research / AESOP TG Public Spaces & Urban Cultures
AU  - Guerreiro, Maria Rosália
AU  - Guarda, I.
AU  - Valério Medeiros
AU  - Loureiro, Vânia
PY  - 2015
DO  - 10.13140/RG.2.1.3680.1045
CY  - Porto
UR  - http://citta-conference.fe.up.pt/conference-program
AB  - The senses are part of the everyday life of the people and they play an important role to experience the
quality of public spaces. This paper addresses the question to what extend people co-presence in
public spaces is related to their field of vision while they are seated in benches or movable chairs or
just standing there. A method based on Isovists and Visibility Graph Analysis (Space Syntax) is
proposed for the evaluation of space affordances concerning visibility, exposure, use, comfort and
social interaction. Through the analysis of places, a more detailed and qualitative interpretation of the
city is carried out. One reason why these research is done is to learn how space syntax analysis is
applicable to the study of public spaces and another is to make the analysis comparable with other
environmental and behavior approaches like “prospect and refugee theory” and the “edge effect”.
William Whyte, who extensively investigated patterns of co-presence and suggested the importance of
places to seat in successful public spaces used to say that “people seat wherever they have a place to
seat”. In this paper we pretend to be a little more specific and investigate the hypothesis that “people
seat wherever they have a place to see” combining direct observation with space syntax tools and
techniques.
The layout of plaza Paiva Couceiro in Lisbon was analyzed according to space syntax methodology.
Standing activities were mapped several times and at different times of the day. Using the software UCL
Depthmap the position of the benches and other standing places were evaluated in terms of isovist
properties and syntactic measures. The results were compared with the behavior mapping.
The study demonstrates the use of the proposed method in the evaluation of the social life of public
spaces showing evidences on the relation between standing activities and the importance of the fields
of vision in people social behavior. The results suggest a good correlation between the syntactic
measures and the user evaluation of the benches and other standing places within the plaza. The
results also suggest how designers and policymakers can manipulate space in order to contribute to
improve urban life.
ER  -