A Study on the relationships among space, and time concepts, and attitudes of students within a dormitory environment

Abstract

The thesis discusses the relationships between space, time and the attitudes of people to time and space. The space concept is defined in relation with time. In order to understand the space concept in a broader sense the spatial elements were introduced. Attitude to time and space is analyzed with the environmental psychology concepts, which are namely attitude that is a manner towards a space; place that is differentiated from the space concept; and place attachment that is initiated with the time spending in a certain space. All these concepts are the major concerns in understanding the human needs and well being of oneself in an environment. Also these concepts change throughout time and affect the spatial understanding. A case study was conducted to analyze the relationships between time space and the students’ attitudes to time and space in dormitory environments at Bilkent University in Turkey. The reason for analyzing the dormitories is that living processes with many different activities take place together in these environments. The analyses consist of students’ evaluations of their rooms, their attitudes to their rooms, and the distribution of the activity patterns, and time spending in their rooms. The results of the research are expected to inform the designers about the importance of understanding the time and the attitudes of people to time and space in designing environments.