A study on factors influencing the spatial oppressiveness in small courtyard spaces within university residential areas

ABSTRACT

A number of obstacles in terms of the growing demand for residential spaces for students in China's education industry. Changing urban development patterns often lead to densely populated, unpleasant university residential neighborhood, posing threats to the well-being of university personnel. This study addresses the limitations of past research, focusing on a real campus's enclosed high-rise student apartment courtyard. Using three key design variables (courtyard area, building height and ground-level interface transparency), 27 sample scenarios were developed for psychological experiments. The findings indicate that while visual scene complexity has minimal impact on oppression to confined environments, building exposure and sky visibility do. People's perception of openness is determined by building exposure, sky visibility, and visual complexity. Higher visual complexity and greater sky visibility enhance the sense of openness. Satisfaction is primarily influenced by sky visibility. The study also conducts a multiple linear regression of spatial and psychological indicators and discusses the tolerance threshold for spatial oppressiveness and the spatial oppressiveness under various spatial types of samples.

KEYWORDS:

• University residential courtyard
• spatial oppressiveness
• solid angle
• multiple linear regression
• high-rise buildings

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Ao Yang and Lan Lan for their contributions to the experimental process and data collection of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data are unavailable due to privacy restrictions.