Paramita Atmodiwirjo¹*, M. Mirza Y. Harahap²**, Yandi Andri Yatmo³***
¹²³Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering Universitas Indonesia
*[email protected], **[email protected],
***[email protected] ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the role of dwelling in urban contemporary living, particularly its contribution to the health of the occupants. It attempts to explain the relationships between the spatial arrangement of the dwelling and the body activity level of the occupants. This paper argues that dwelling could become a potential setting that encourages active body movement and promotes health. This role becomes important within the current context of urban lifestyle where people tend to be more sedentary with less movement. The role of dwelling to encourage active body movement was examined through an analytical study of human body movement in relation to spaces and objects by using the concept of hodological space as an experienced space beyond the abstract, geometric space. An exploratory study was conducted to trace the hodological space in a number of houses, and analyze the emergence of hodological space in relation to body movement and everyday activities.
The findings of this study suggest the importance on reconstructing the role of dwelling through understanding the dynamic of hodological path as experienced by the body of the occupants.
Keywords: Hodological space, dwelling, body movement, activity, health.
INTRODUCTION
Urban contemporary living is characterized by the tendency for the people to have increased time spent for sedentary activities; people tend to perform lighter physical job with less energy, more sitting, and less exercise (Owen et. al., 2010). Human living space also tends to be arranged based on efficiency, functional proximity and accessibility of spaces and objects. However, such efficiency might also reduce opportunities for body movement which is actually needed for human body to be healthy.
This paper discusses how dwelling could perform as a setting to promote active body movement.
Human occupation in dwelling could be considered as a form of connection between body and place. Human dwells in certain space in order to have a fixed place, a space in which he has connection with and rooted to as a way to find stability and security (Bollnow, 2011). The relationship between the body and dwelling is to some extent manifested through bodily-experience, “a certain possession of the world by my body, a gearing of my body to the world” (Dovey, 1985: 2). Human engagement to the world could be achieved through this bodily movement and activity (Franck & Lepori, 2000). Such engagement is manifested by ‘gearing’ our body to the world, the house, which mediates us with the space beyond (Lockard, 2006).
Dwelling is also a manifestation of human attempts to have a fixed location.
“The house is a physical structure with a fixed location”, (Lockard, 2006: 5);
it is a structure consisting of a horizontal plane and vertical axis (Bollnow, 2011). These horizontal plane and vertical axis exist in a conceptual space which is abstract, geometric, and objectively measured (Dovey, 1985).
Human occupation of dwelling occurs within such physical structure, in which the human body is interacted with the horizontal plane and vertical axis through various forms of body movement during everyday actions and activities.
However, dwelling is more than just an abstract, geometric space which contains human body. An inquiry into the human body experience within the context of dwelling needs to consider the role of dwelling as an experienced space. Derived from the long-established idea of
“life-space” from Lewin (1939), Bollnow (2011) suggested a concept of
“hodological space” as an experienced space, as a space of inhabitation.
It is the understanding of space as experienced rather than as merely geometrical, measured space. This study intends to examine the role
of dwelling to promote active body movement based on the idea of hodological space. By tracing the hodological space of the occupants, this study attempts to uncover the relationship between space, body and health.
SPACE, BODY AND HEALTH
A body of research has attempted to explore the relationship between quality of physical space and health, particularly in relation to physical activity and obesity (Ding and Gebel, 2012). Many of the studies explained the relationship between certain features or conditions of the physical environment and certain health indicator such as BMI and level of activity. For example, a study found that the physical conditions of exterior and interior of a neighbourhood were associated with BMI of urban young children and their mothers (Duarte et al, 2010). Another research suggested the importance of quality of design of the physical environment to promote walking as a healthy behavior (Lu, 2010). It becomes important to consider the elements of physical environment that could influence health condition of the inhabitants.
There have been some attempts to encourage more active movement through design (Pollak, 2012), especially in urban public space or public buildings. There is, however, still a lack of studies addressing the role of dwelling on health. More studies are needed to address how housing tend to become an obesity-mediating environment (Chambers and Fuster, 2012) and how such tendency needs to be reversed.
Some studies addressed the relationship between the spatial configuration of the physical environment and the activities performed by the occupants.
For example, a research found that the residents living in higher floor tended to have lower BMI (Shenassa et al, 2008). Another study found that the spatial organization of the house, particularly integration among the rooms was correlated to social and incidental participation in sedentary activities, such as watching TV, sitting and reclining. The more integrated the spatial organization, the more the residents tend to be involved in social, sedentary activities (Bafna and Chamers, 2013).
These studies suggest the potential of spatial organization of the house to either encourage or discourage active movement of the occupants.
However, these studies tend to consider the house as the unit of study as a whole, without any further inquiry into how the relationship among space, body and health occur within the everydayness and habitual actions of
the residents. This will become the main concern of this study through the concept of hodological space.
TRACING HODOLOGICAL SPACES IN THE DWELLING
Hodological spaces of dwelling: Conceptual understanding
Hodological space is a mathematical space which concerns with distance and path (Bollnow, 2011), however this concept suggests the presence of distance and path as elements of experienced space or space of inhabitation. One could not discuss hodological space without mentioning the hodological path. Path of human movement in certain space creates a hodological space which reveals how the space is experienced mathematically as manifested in human movement along the horizontal plane and vertical axis. Generally, hodological path is described as a straight line from one point of where the human positioned to another point of where certain goal is located (Bollnow, 1936). There are two important aspects in this hodological path concept (Brown, 1936): locomotion, a force which makes human move, and medium, a space with its barriers in which the locomotion pass through, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Modified diagram of the hodological path concept Adapted from Brown (1936)
In a house (the medium), the spatial arrangement of the house (the barrier) determines the paths of the occupants while walking around the house for certain purpose or goal (the locomotion). The path of the occupants determines the actual distance as experienced, rather than the metric distance. For example, two points in two different rooms in a house separated by the wall might have an actual distance of only few centimeters, yet based on this hodological space concept, this distance might change depending on how the body actually moves from one room to another. Hence, the distance between the two points could increase as influenced by the spatial arrangement of the house which
determine the walking path of the occupant. Thus, by tracing the relations of body movement and space which exist as the hodological path, the study reveals not only the physical path of the occupants in their houses, but also how the path takes its role as a part of everyday living.
The methods
This study is an exploratory study of hodological spaces in the house as an attempt to reveal the relationship between body movement and space.
Only a small number of cases were observed and analyzed in order to generate indicative findings. In this paper, two cases will be presented in details. The first is a two-storey house with four occupants, while the second is a single-storey house with six occupants. The analysis of hodological spaces in these two cases was based on the observation of occupants’
movements during their morning routine, thus only reflecting a small portion of their everyday activities.
The methods of this study combined two contrasting approaches of studying hodological space (Brown, 1936). First, we traced the hodological space by quantifying the distance and path that were experienced by the occupants in the medium of space along both horizontal plane and vertical axis. Second, we traced the locomotion of the movement in order to understand how the occupant’s hodological paths occurred in the context of everyday activities.
Quantifying the area of hodological space
Hodological space is based on the body orientation to the physical world (Franck & Lepori, 2000: 31), then it refers to the triaxial structure of human body: the front and back, right and left, and up and above (Dovey, 1985).
Movement occur on horizontal plane that represents the front-back-left- right, and along vertical axis representing the up-above (Bollnow, 2011).
Hodological space is essentially a mathematical space, thus the activity paths of the occupants could be quantitatively measured. Although the real paths are more likely to occur as curved or arbitrary lines, this study uses straight-line path as the representation of the occupants’ movement (Bollnow, 2011), In the analysis, the movement paths were then converted into space area. Since human body has dimension, the paths are represented as a series of squares, which were then termed movement intensity squares, with different colors indicating different levels of intensity.
This path representation is needed as the hodological path is “between
the topological regions rather than between points” (Brown, 1936: 13).
The square diagrams attempt to represent hodological space not merely as a mathematical space that is totally structured, but as a conceptual space which is not entirely structured (Brown, 1936).
Analysing the spatial locomotion through event diagram
In addition to quantitative measurement, this study analyses the details of occupants’ movement paths through event diagrams. This approach is necessary to uncover the more qualitative aspects of hodological space.
The explanation through diagrams allows a deeper understanding of the hodological paths in relation to the spaces, boundaries, furniture and other objects in the dwellings.
By combining quantitative measurement and qualitative analytical diagrams of hodological space, this study attempts to reveal the relationship among spatial organization, physical entities and the occupants’ movement habit, and how they could contribute to active body movement and health.
FINDINGS
Variety of movement path of occupants
The observation of morning routines in the two cases indicates a variety of movement paths of different occupants. Figure 1 illustrates the movement paths of two occupants, Mr. H and Mrs. R in House #1. Mrs. R showed a more active path both horizontally and vertically than Mr. H. While Mr. H only moved vertically once, Mrs. H moved vertically more actively, from the second floor to the first floor back to the second floor and down again to the first floor.
Figure 2. Movement intensity square diagram of two occupants in House #1
These different movements generate more area of hodological space of Mrs. R compared to Mr. H as illustrated in Table 1. Mrs. R performed more movement paths with the total number of 478 movement intensity squares which is approximately 202.00 sqm, while Mr. H only performed half of it, with 230 movement intensity squares or approximately 97.20 sqm.
Table 1. Occupants’ movement path area in House #1
Occupant Total no. of squares Total area of squares Total area of hodological
space 1st Floor 1st Floor 1st Floor 2nd Floor
Mr. H 111 119 46.90 50.30 97.20
Mrs. R 168 112 71.00 47.30
202.00
92 106 38.90 44.80
Further analysis in Table 2 indicates that both occupants performed a range of movement intensity from 1 to 5. However, Mrs. R had more active hodological paths in vertical axis which then had implication on the more active hodological space in horizontal plane as well. Her hodological path indicated larger number of movement intensity square and larger total area number compared to those of Mr. H.
Table 2. Occupants’ movement intensity in House #1
Occupant Floor Level of Intensity
1 2 3 4 5
Mr. H
1st Floor 78 36 3 2 -
2nd Floor 77 29 8 4 1
Total no of square 155 65 12 6 1
Total area 64.49 54.93 15.21 10.14 2.11
Mrs. R
1st Floor (1) 85 59 22 1 -
1st Floor (2) 87 5 - - -
2nd Floor (1) 67 41 4 - -
2nd Floor (2) 56 36 7 5 2
Total no of square 295 141 33 6 2
Total area 124.64 119.15 418.38 10.14 4.23
The measured area of hodological space in Table 1 and Table 2 indicates that the more complex the activity level of the occupant, the higher his/
her scope of movement which then affects the further distance of his/
her hodological path. Figure 2 also illustrates different levels of intensity performed by two occupants in different areas of the house. The high
intensity path area of Mrs. R was located around the stairs on the second floor and the kitchen on the first floor. Meanwhile, the high intensity path area of Mr. H was around bathroom area on the second floor.
The analysis of hodological path in House #2, which is a single story house, is presented in Figure 2. It illustrates the movement path during the morning routine of two occupants, Mrs. B and Mrs. N.
Figure 3. Movement intensity square diagram in House #2
The data shows quite different intensity on their movement paths. Table 3 shows that Mrs. N had 369 movement intensity squares which cover an area of 155.90 sqm while Mrs. B had 241 movement intensity squares which cover an area of 101.82 sqm. In general, Mrs. N performed more active movement paths than Mrs. B.
Table 3. Occupants’ movement path area in House #2
Occupant Number of square Total area of hodological space
Mrs. N 369 155.90
Mrs. B 241 101.82
The difference could also be observed in the level of intensity performed by both occupants, as can be seen in Table 4. While Mrs. B performed only level 6 out of 11 of the movement intensity square, Mrs. N performed higher intensity on her movement up to level 11. Such high intensity
movement of Mrs. M was also reflected in the total area covered by her movement path, which was almost twice as total coverage of movement path of Mrs. B.
Table 4. Occupants’ movement intensity in House #2
Occupant Level of Intensity
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11
Mrs. N 136 102 51 27 19 19 10 4 1
Area coverage 57.46 86.19 64.64 45.63 40.15 48.17 29.58 15.21 4.65
Mrs. B 112 74 26 16 12 1 - - -
Area coverage 47.32 62.53 32.96 27.04 25.35 2.54 - - -
Figure 3 also reveals the difference in the spaces experienced by the occupants experienced. Compared to Mrs. B, Mrs. N experienced almost every room in the house. However, the movement intensity squares also indicated a slight similarity where the highest intensity movement path of both occupants (level 6 of Mrs. B and level 11 of Mrs. N) occurred in the small space between the sofa in the living room and the kitchen table set in the dining room.
The findings above suggest that the analysis of hodological path could illustrate the variety of movement paths of the different occupants in certain house. They illustrate that the same spatial setting of living space could generate different active movement paths for the occupants.
Elements involved within the hodological path
The elements involved within the hodological path need to be further analyzed in order to know the fluidity of the hodological space, the tension, and also its vector implication (Brown, 1936). Findings on this section explain the experiential and psychological aspects involved in the hodological path within the spaces of the houses as represented through event diagrams. Yet the quantitative measurement is still needed to support the diagrams, as “the psychological space is quasi-physical, i.e., where initial position and goal may be ordered to infinitely structured space” (Brown, 1936: 8).
Based on the observation of the hodological path in House #1 and
#2, there seem to be four elements that might have impacts on the occupants’ movement intensity and movement area: the objects, the types of activities, the boundaries and the occupant’s habit.
The objects
This study indicates that the hodological path of the occupants of a house might depends on the presence of objects which are relate both directly and indirectly to the activity of which the occupants performed, as shown in Figure 4 to 6.
Figure 4 is the event diagram of Mr. H in House #1 illustrating his activity during breakfast. The object with direct influence was the sink, the tissue and the trash can, while the object with indirect influence was the cabinet beside the dining table set. The location of these four different objects had certain impacts on his movement intensity and movement area. The movement intensity increased as he had to go back and forth to wash his hand before and after eating, took the tissue and went to the sink again to throw away the used tissue into the trash can beside the sink. This going-back-and-forward movement intensified his path thus at the same time extended his movement area. The cabinet indirectly added the effect of this going-back-and-forward movement. The position of the cabinet in-between the tissue, the dining table and the trash can tended to force Mr. H to take longer path; hence he performed a longer movement distance and larger area coverage.
Figure 4. Event diagrams of Mr. H in House #1 and Mrs. B in House #2 Such situation also occurred in Mrs. B’s movement path while going back and forth between the bathroom and the kitchen in House #2, as also illustrated in Figure 4. Similar to the example of Mr. H the objects also took role as either the direct or indirect influence. In Mrs. B’s case, the cupboard has direct influence while the sofa had indirect influence.
The types of activities
Another finding of the study is that different type of activities which
undoubtedly resulted in different movement paths, although performed in the same location, may lead to different movement area coverage and movement intensity. This could be identified by comparing the different activities of two occupants in the same space. For example, both Mr.
H and Mrs. R had movement path in the dining space (Figure 5). They experienced this space in different ways as their activities are different, yet there was a similarity between these two events in terms of the influence of the object. Both had the movement paths that were influenced by the presence of the cabinet in that space.
Figure 5. Event diagrams of Mr. H and Mrs. R in the dining space, House #1 The boundaries
The analysis of movement path also indicated that boundaries might influence the occupant’s movement; either lengthening or shortening the distance. Figure 6 is an example of how boundaries could shorten the movement path in the case of Mrs. R’s preparation before going to work, especially when dropping the things at the stairs. When she needed her house assistant to iron her clothes, she dropped her clothes from the second floor to the first floor through the void. This action suggested that although there was a boundary between the first and the second floor, Mrs. R managed to find the shortest distance through the presence of the void. This allowed her to cut her movement path up to approximately 23 movement intensity square, or about 9.72 sqm.
Another event diagram in Figure 6 indicated the opposite situation, when Mrs. N faced the boundary in the form of an object; the sofa located between her bedroom and kitchen. When she needed to go to her bedroom from the kitchen, instead of taking a straight path, she had to take a round path, thus she walked further distance than if there was no sofa. Instead of walking approximately just 18 movement intensity squares