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It has been suggested that “space and artifacts constitute systems of communication which organizations build up within themselves” (Gagliardi, 1992a, b, p. vi) and reflect the cultural life within that organization. This is a study of how the “landscape” of a public library (“Library X”), as an information retrieval system, relates to the values of the people who created it. The efforts here are geared towards understanding the physical instantiation of institutional culture and, more specifically, institutional values as they are reflected through the artifact.

The purpose of this paper is to present a high‐level investigation of the physical‐conceptual continuum occupied by both digital and physical libraries.

A framework is provided for thinking about the notions of place and library. The issue of materials and the ideas they represent is considered. Places for people are considered, including issues of people's sense of place in physical and digital spaces. The issue of physical and digital spaces as places for work, collaboration, and community‐building is considered.

As more digital libraries are built, and as more physical libraries offer electronic access to parts of their collection, two trends are likely to result: the role of the library as a storage space for materials will become decreasingly important; and the role of the library as a space for users, for individual and collaborative work, and as a space for social activity, will become increasingly important.

Digital libraries are unable to fulfill some of the functions of the physical library as physical spaces, but are able to offer functions beyond what the physical library can offer as cognitive spaces.

Areas of likely future development for digital libraries are suggested, as vehicles for enhancing cognitive space by augmenting representations of ideas in materials.

This paper argues that in many ways digital libraries really are places in the conceptual sense, and will continue to broaden and enrich the roles that libraries play in people's lives and in the larger social milieu.

With the technological innovation dominating higher education, the university libraries, as physical spaces, continue to play a crucial role in connecting students with knowledge. The emergence of the “Learning Commons” serves as a catalyst in the design of library spaces, renewing libraries’ roles and missions and making them popular to Millennials for new reasons. This study aims to record Greek librarians' views on the current situation in Greek academic libraries regarding physical space design, services provided and the existence of the “Learning Commons” model characteristics.

This study was conducted through an online survey structured questionnaire (closed-ended, five-point Likert scale, multiple-choice and statements questions). This study population comprised librarians working in 37 academic institutions and colleges. The collected data were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. The research questions were answered using variables creation and the tests, t-test, ANOVA and Kruskal–Wallis. The groups of questions were tested for their reliability using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

In total, 186 librarians responded to this study. The responses revealed that participants were willing and ready to accept and support a different approach to academic library physical spaces use, according to the shared learning spaces model. However, this requires changes in the organization's vision, further growth and evolution. Although recently most Greek academic libraries have made significant progress in developing their services to function as information and digital hubs, they do not function as learning collaborative hubs, since the “Learning Commons” model is not reflected in their buildings.

The creation of new academic libraries according to the “common” model is a rapidly evolving issue that affects Greek libraries. This paper highlights the characteristics of libraries that should be adopted in the modern era, the new roles of academic librarians and the importance of an appropriate design of the physical space to achieve optimal learning outcomes. At the same time, this paper is one of the few that illustrates librarians', and not users', perceptions of these changes. This paper is a good research example, and the methodology for measuring this type of context could be used by other future research approaches in other countries.

Only recently has physical space design become more widely recognized as playing a critical role in delivery of care, with an emerging body of literature on the application of human factors approaches to design and evaluation. This chapter describes the use of human factors approaches to develop and conduct an evaluation of a proposed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit redesign in a Midwestern children’s hospital. Methods included observations and knowledge elicitation from stakeholders to characterize their goals, challenges, and needs. This characterization is integral to informing the design of user-centered solutions, including physical space design. We also describe an approach to evaluating the proposed design that yielded actionable recommendations specific to hospital-driven design goals.

Due to land resource scarcity, sustainable urban development in high-density cities has long been challenging. As such, many cities are formulating plans to “dig deep”, resulting in more citizens working and/or staying underground for longer periods of time. However, owing to the particularities of underground space, the factors involved in the creation of a healthy environment are different from those involved in aboveground developments. This study thus aims to investigate the influences of various underground environment factors on users' health through a holistic approach.

To achieve this aim, 12 underground sites and 12 corresponding aboveground sites are selected for a large-scale questionnaire survey, resulting in 651 survey samples. The survey covers post-occupancy evaluation of health (physical and psychosocial), underground environmental quality (visual, thermal, acoustic comfort, indoor air quality and ventilation), space design and greenery. Independent-sample T-test, Pearson correlation, multiple regression modelling and structural equation modelling are used to investigate whether significant differences exist between health of underground and aboveground users, and to develop an underground environment-health model for unveiling the significant associations between underground environment factors and users' health. To cross validate the results, an objective field measurement study is further conducted on six underground sites. The objective measurement results are used to cross validate the survey results.

The questionnaire results provide the following evidence: (1) health of underground users is significantly poorer than that of their aboveground counterparts; (2) underground development users' health is significantly affected by space design, greenery and environmental quality in terms of thermal comfort, indoor air quality, ventilation and acoustic comfort but not visual comfort; and (3) amongst the various identified factors, space design has the strongest predicting effects on human health. The field study echoes the survey findings and further unveils the relationships between different environmental factors and human health.

The results shed light on the importance of distinguishing between underground developments and aboveground ones in various guidelines and standards, especially those related to space management.

This study aims to explore the need for space (demand) and the provision thereof (supply) in the Faculty of Architecture building at Thammasat University Rangsit campus using variables from the designing an accommodation strategy (DAS) framework; these variables are incorporated to test and improve the framework. Another purpose is to examine the planning and development of the faculty building to understand its strategy, which serves as a means to contribute to the planning and development theory.

A case study of the Faculty of Architecture building was conducted at Thammasat University in Thailand. The DAS framework was used to reconstruct and examine the development process of the building to determine the gaps between supply and demand in terms of building space, to reflect on the building plan and process and to make suggestions as to how the DAS framework might be improved. Research methods included interviews and document analysis concerning space requirements and provision in the Faculty of Architecture building.

The gaps between supply and demand in terms of the faculty building space are affected by the condition of the building (i.e. building obsolescence), the number of building users and the changing environmental context. This study shows that both pre-design and post-occupancy evaluation are essential to collect data concerning the match or mismatch between supply and demand of space and to assess users’ needs and preferences concerning the faculty building. Regarding the building development process, factors impacting the step-by-step planning of the real estate interventions include the organisational context (public/private sector) and the management of the construction project (time, cost, quality). The DAS framework is found to be useful for structuring the information-generating processes necessary to determine gaps between demand and supply in terms of space and for making decisions regarding real estate interventions.

Additional case studies in different environmental and organisational contexts are required to test the DAS framework and improve data validity. This study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic period, which affected data accessibility.

The results provide insight into the influence of various factors on the decision of corporate real estate. The DAS framework can be used to explore the range of demand for and supply of space and to find an optimal match.

This paper shows valuable steps in planning and development of educational real estate and a first application of the DAS framework in Thailand. The findings confirm the importance of the physical learning environment of architecture schools, particularly the studio spaces required in architecture education.

The research outlined in this paper highlights the importance of certain factors related to primary health care buildings’ physical environment, such as the facility size, the functional efficiency, and the health planning of public areas in the health centers to improve the architectural space of health facilities.

This study was performed using a mixed method. Data collection was carried out through observational research and descriptive analysis in six primary health care facilities in Salvador and Lauro de Freitas, Brazil.

Based on this study’s results, facility capacity, functional efficiency and space accessibility have been considered the facilities’ main problems in the investigated context. The impact of the users’ perspective on healthcare facilities was assessed for each of these three criteria to verify the results obtained. Furthermore, most of the parameters were not satisfied, as the buildings analyzed had defects in their physical environment. Therefore, it is necessary to review and pay more attention to the architecture of these cities’ primary health care units.

The present study addresses the architectural environment design in Brazil’s healthcare facilities, which still have gaps. Improving the physical space of a health center ensures that the approach used in this research also applies to other health centers in similar contexts. The awareness that space’s activities and configurations will change according to each territory examined will open up so many investigation worlds.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether virtual space can be used to alleviate physical space constraints for group collaboration in an urban academic library environment. Specifically, this paper looks to uncover whether library users will turn to library‐provided virtual space when there is a scarcity of physical space.

This project discusses the design of the physical and virtual environment, and then measures the use of this environment quantitatively over a 47‐month period (2005‐2009).

Results indicate that physical spaces for group collaboration are in very high demand, whereas virtual ones are not. A scarcity of physical collaboration spaces does not lead users to library‐provided virtual space, but rather to work around the scarcity in the physical world.

The paper highlights the value of the library as a gathering place and the ways in which virtual collaboration space cannot easily take the place of physical collaboration space.

Future places for learning and working are digitally and physically integrated hybrid environments. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the co-creation process of the remote presence-based digital and physical co-working and co-learning place. The context is cross-cultural when Finnish space approach is applied and further developed in Namibia.

A qualitative case study is conducted of the Future Tech Lab (FT Lab) in the University of Namibia’s main campus. The case study of the FT Lab is about 200m² space with three different zones in the University of Namibia’s main campus. The physical solution encourages collaboration and technical solutions interlink the place overseas by using the remote presence. The data are gathered by using document analysis, observations, participatory workshops and interviews including structured questionnaire.

The action design research approach is a functional framework to co-create hybrid environments in two ways. It helps to design digital and physical solutions as integrated entity. Additionally, it provides a tool to analyse decision-making processes as well as design initiatives, also from the cultural perspective. Both Finnish and Namibian cultures are normative and feminine, which helped the realisation of the project based on mutual trust. However, the differences in power distance were affecting the process fluency and decision-making processes.

The findings indicate that the co-design of the hybrid-learning environment sets requirements for the physical solution such as surface materials for premises and retrofitting of technology, which need to be considered by co-creation from the shared vision to realisation of the space. The co-creation involves many stakeholders, and cultural differences have a different impact on various stages of the co-creation process.

The cultural context in the case study provides an interesting comparison between the Finnish and Namibian approach. The remote presence and its requirements provide new knowledge and guidelines for co-creation of hybrid environments.

The professional discourse on academic library planning and design is examined. A critical realist philosophical stance and a constructionist perspective constitute the theoretical framework that, paired with Fairclough's methodology for critical discourse analysis, is used to examine the constitution of interpretative repertoires and of a discourse constructing the academic library as a learning place. The information commons, learning commons, and library designed for learning repertoires are described and the effects of discursive activity are analyzed. Three types of effects are presented: (1) the production by the LIS community of discourse on academic libraries of a sizable body of literature on the information commons and on the learning commons, (2) the construction of new types of libraries on the commons model proposed by Beagle, and (3) the metaphorization of the library as business. The study concludes that the existing discourse takes a facilities management perspective dominated by concerns with technology, equipment, and space requirements that does not address the physical, psychological, and environmental qualities of library space design. Consequently, it is suggested that architectural programming techniques should be used in library planning and design that consider the architectural features and environmental design factors contributing to the making of a place where learning is facilitated.