Environmental psychology and its contribution to archuitectural design

Abstract

The object of this article is to show the importance the importance of environmental psychology and how this one intervenes in the development of the design projects of the students of architecture of the Universidad del Valle; that is, an architect cannot designa hospital or other architeé:tural scenario alone, without to considererthe user's expectations about the space he inhabits, orthe knowledge of the professional fields that intervene in the creation of the project, since they are indispensable for the design, beca use they guarantee that this scenario is the most satisfactory as possible. One usual aspect that is found in the academy is that there is much talk about the habitability of space, however, students do not deepen it but rather define it superficially, which is paradoxical, since they are the ones who manage and manipulate space; this was
the reason to investigate the habitability of space from another approach, that is, with the focus of environmental psychology. Environmental psychologists perform severa! interventions in the spatial reconfiguration of several architectural scenarios, whose results have been optirnal, improving the spatial quality and thus the quality of life of the users, which led to query severa! questions, including: how Environmental psychology can contribute to the design and spatial reconfiguration of an architectural setting? These questions led to the development of this article, concluding that environmental psychology is a tool and the triggerfor an integraljholistic design of living space.