Responding to user cultural needs in hospitals with the support of Space Syntax Analysis

As part of a research project about hospital humanization, this study applied Space Syntax analysis techniques to answer two key research questions: • is it possible to evaluate the experiential path of the user within a hospital by introducing configurational parameters that take into account the relationships between spaces? • Can configurational parameters be used to understand how much hospital space meets specific cultural needs in order to develop spatial indicators which can satisfy immigrant user needs? Space Syntax methodology deals with both questions. It interprets architecture as the essence of relationships and asserts that culture plays a fundamental role in the design of a building and in particular in the determination of its spatial forms (Hillier and Hanson, 1984; Hillier, 1999). A distinction between general and immigrant users has been made due to the different needs of the two categories. Each user need has been associated with specific spatial requirements and environmental and configurational indicators. Environmental indicators refer to the presence or absence of environmental factors that can affect the user’s psychophysical wellbeing. Configurational indicators refer to the syntactic properties of the space for which the Space Syntax methodology tools were used. The indicators identified were then applied to the spaces that form the outpatient path of a hospital/ case study in Turin and a rating was assigned to each of the analysed areas according to the satisfaction level of the indicator. In this way feedback was obtained on the degree of humanization of the structure considered. This feedback can simplify the identification of areas which are most in need of improvement to meet user demands. In this study, therefore, the measures and configurational analysis of Space Syntax were used as a response to spatial requirements arising from cultural needs, combining spatial analysis and quantitative measures with abstract socio-cultural constructs. The Space Syntax tools were then used as a link between the cultural features of the users and the configurational aspects of the spaces.