Perception Aspects in Underground Spaces using ... - TOI - TU Delft

judgement and experience of space. Although they are inseparable, analytically they can bedistinguished. In other words, the variables can be defined for both aspects, which makes theirassessment easier to control. First, an operative distinction can be made in a following way.Fulfillment of public safety aspects is necessary and therefore those aspects are seen as standardrequirement. Fulfillment of comfort aspects is an additional quality and should be satisfactory inso far as possible. Here again it is important to say that there can never be such a sharp separationand that the overlapping is eventually inevitable. If we summarize the above-mentioned aspects,we can extract eight determinants of comfort and perception of public safety. Those aspects aresubdivided into two groups (A n and B n ), where group A n represents the determinants of publicsafety and group B n are the comfort determinants (Figure 2).escape (A 2 )visibility/light (A 3 )overview (A 1 )surveillance/presence of people (A 4 )DETERMINANTS OFPUBLIC SAFETY (A n )ANDCOMFORT (B n )wayfinding (B 1 )daylight (B 4 )attractiveness/maintenance (B 2 )physiologicalcomfort (B 3 )INTERVENINGVARIABLESFigure 2: Determinants of public safety and comfortSafety in the surrounding was also stated to be very important (Laarhoeven, 1997) but such studyis of a totally different scale than the aspects considered on a building level. It may be the studyfor itself and therefore this aspect is only included in a questionnaire to assess its importance, butno specific further questions were asked regarding the surrounding of the station. For that reason,this aspect was not mentioned in the Figure 2.In the following text, each of the determinants of public safety and comfort will be separatelyaddressed showing through each aspect the possible relation with the spatial characteristics. Thespatial characteristics are discussed separately in Section 3.2.2.Overview (A 1 )In the literature, overview is defined as a space that offers no possibility for an eventual offenderto hide himself (Korz, 1998). Nasar and Jones (1997) state that there are two kinds of physicalconcealment cues: objects such as trees, vehicles, walls and patterns of darkness and shadow. Intheir research, they found that mainly females associated fear of attack with those places wheresomeone could be hiding. They also reported fears in relation to dark spots and possibleentrapment (Warr, 1990; Fisher, 1992; Nasar, 1997).The term overview is here defined as some arrangement of spatial elements that provides a goodsurveyability by an individual. In other words, a space that has no large objects or sharp shadowswhich would influence the ability to survey the space. Goffman (1971) by using a term “lurk- 29 -