A sociable place

People are sociable creatures. we need social interaction of various sorts, including casual contact with strangers as well as planned meetings with friends and acquaintances. It is the task of the designer to understand these needs and help provide appropriate settings for social contact. This thesis examines one such setting: public outdoor spaces, or gathering places, and attempts to discover design elements which can help these places support social contact and gathering. These elements are presented in the form of design criteria, which are then applied to a short design study. Finally, this thesis proposes that we incorporate more of these places with in smaller cities and neighborhoods, to bolster existing social networks and to provide greater opportunities for meeting and gathering within communities.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1986

Author dc:creator

• Turner, Christena H

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chester Lee Sprague.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78068

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/78068