Thesis (M.Sc.)-Cairo University, 2023.

Bibliography: pages 149-165.

Architecture is the most social human art, it shapes our built environments and hereby, our daily lives. As such, it is our responsibility to make sure that we are delivering architecture that meets not only the functional needs, but also the social and psychological ones. Indeed, architecture is expected to create environments that promote the wellbeing of its occupants through creating socially sustainable spaces. As such, social sustainability is counted as an important pillar within the three sustainability dimensions, yet it was not given the same value of study in the previous literature regarding the scale of architectural spaces and their forms. In fact, the way we build and shape our living environments, can either foster or hinder sociability and social interaction, since these built environments are of major influence on people’s feelings, behaviors, and interactions with the surrounding built environment, the community and one another. In fact, understanding this mutual relationship between people and their built environments is the core of environmental psychology. Accordingly, studying environmental psychology could be seen as the liaison linking between analyzing how architecture as the built environment, influences the human behavior, while focusing on the behaviors enhancing sociability.
As such, this study aims to investigate how architectural forms can impact socially sustainable behaviors, through understanding the effects of architectural forms on human emotion, experience, and behavior. Therefore, tackling several research gaps in the topics of social sustainability, environmental psychology, and architecture, as well as deriving the relationship between them, required a multiple of research approaches. Using firstly, the theoretical approach, this thesis discussed the three topics for the aim of presenting comprehensive background and literature. Where the first topic aimed at understanding the concept of social sustainability, its dimensions, and aspects; then pave the way into situating social sustainability in an architectural context. This concluded to how we can interpret and assess social sustainability in architecture, while focusing on the aspect of social interaction. Then, the second topic discusses the concept of environmental psychology, present its different theoretical approaches and aspects to further grasp the concept and relate it to the study. This was followed by the third topic where we investigate the relationship between architecture and environmental psychology by presenting different architectural aspects and their effects on the human experience, psyche, and behavior while focusing on the aspect of architectural forms.
Thus, based on literature, the analytical and empirical approaches were derived and applied to investigate the interrelationships between architectural forms, the individuals’ emotions and behaviors, and aspects of sociability. As such, an experimental study incorporating six virtual architectural spaces of entertainment buildings’ typologies that represented different architectural forms namely rectilinear, angular, and curvilinear were assessed. This assessment was based on the emotional and behavioral reactions of the respondents, and then was related to positive environmental behaviors of sociability. The results to the study were therefore analyzed, discussed and cross referenced with literature, concluding that architectural forms constituted of different line types and levels of complexities indeed have significant effects on the human emotion, experience, and behavior in the built environment. This in turn affects the aspect of fostering or hindering socially sustainable behaviors in indoor public architectural spaces.

العمارة هي الفن البشري الأكثر اجتماعية ، وهذا هو سبب اعتبار الاستدامة الاجتماعية ركيزة مهمة في الوقت الحاضر حيث انها تهدف الي تحقيق فراغات ناجحة اجتماعيًا . في الواقع ، الطريقة التي نبني بها بيئاتنا المعيشية وتشكيلها يمكن أن تعزز أو تعيق التواصل الاجتماعي. بالإضافة إلى ذلك ، فإن هذه البيئات المبنية لها تأثير كبير على مشاعر الناس وسلوكياتهم وتفاعلاتهم مع البيئة المبنية المحيطة ، والمجتمع ومع بعضهم البعض. إن فهم هذه العلاقة المتبادلة بين الناس وبيئاتهم المبنية هو جوهر علم النفس البيئي ، والذي يمكن اعتباره صلة وصل بين تحليل كيفية تأثير العمارة كبيئة مبنية على السلوك البشري ، مع التركيز على السلوكيات التي تعزز التواصل الاجتماعي. وفقًا لذلك ، تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى استكشاف كيفية تأثير الأشكال المعمارية على السلوكيات المستدامة اجتماعيًا ، من خلال فهم تأثيرات الأشكال المعمارية على المشاعر والسلوك.

Issues also as CD.

Text in English and abstract in Arabic & English.