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Keywords

Emotional response, built environment wellbeing, built environment characteristics, Kasbah ofAlgiers, content analysis

Disciplines

Architecture | Business | Life Sciences | Medicine and Health Sciences

Abstract

Human's emotional responses to the built environment are crucial to ensure both well-being and urban consciousness. The following research aims to explore the relationship between user's emotional responses to the built environment stimulus related to wellbeing. It studies people's emotional response as they encounter the alleys of the Kasbah of Algiers. A group of 10 architects participated in this study; they walked through the alleys of the Kasbah of Algiers, while talking spontaneously about their emotions and feelings regarding this space, and taking simultaneously pictures of the built environment scenes that are in relation with their emotional experience. Based on the Plutchik’s works, a content analysis is conducted on this 10 architect's collected testimonies. This analysis aims to identify the architect's emotional response to the spatial stimulus of the Kasbah of Algiers, and its related cognitive and behavioral reactions. The results show that joy, admiration, surprise, awe and optimism are the emotional responses that address more users' comfort, satisfaction and well-being in the Kasbah of Algiers. these emotional responses are related to the spatial stimulus: terraces with open view on the sea and the sky; large and proportioned lanes flooded with sun light and fresh air; and transition from close dark ambiances and spaces to open lightened ambiances and spaces like the transition in the Kasbah dwellings from the ''Skifa'' to the ''patio'' and from the ''rooms and stairs'' to the ''terrace'', or the transition from the ''alley'' to the ''impasse'' especially the covered impasses with low ceilings.

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