Abstract
Emotional reactions are important in people’s lives and can be positively or negatively affected by the architectural environment in which they find themselves. This study aims to understand how architectural forms, whether curved or straight, can influence emotional reactions, through an objective (biosensors) and subjective (questionnaires) evaluation of two apartments. Most of the studies carried out with biosensors and subjective techniques we analyzed do not present any context and isolate the stimuli from the experiences (static situations) in such a way that they become unreal in the face of the environments that people experience in their daily lives. In this study, we designed two similar apartments, with only formal architectural variations, one with curved shapes and the other with rectilinear shapes. The methodology applied is based on subjective techniques, depending on the opinion of the participants (Self-assessment Manikin), and also on objective techniques, which use physiological measurements obtained by biosensors (Electrical Dermal Activity, Electrocardiogram, Respiratory Frequency and Amplitude). A narrative was used to give the same context to all participants and give them freedom to explore the space during the visit to the apartments. The objective results showed that the curvilinear apartment provoked less activation than the rectilinear apartment, which may mean that the participants were more relaxed or calm in this apartment. Regarding the subjective results, the participants reported feeling more pleasure in the curvilinear apartment, also perceiving a greater activation (excitement) than in the straight apartment. This last result is not in agreement with the objective evaluation, probably because the sample is made up of design students who have a more refined critical spirit, or simply because they took the questionnaire moments after the virtual experience and now have some difficulty in accessing their memory and emotions. The results obtained with the objective evaluation are in agreement with the data reported in the literature, carried out in studies with static experiences, which means that the methodology proposed in this article proved to be effective. This discovery may motivate future studies to use this methodology, in which the interaction with space is more natural.
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Acknowledgements
This work is financed by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the Projects with the references “UID/EAT/04008/2020” and “2021.05015.BD”. Research funded by CIAUD, (Project UID/EAT/4008/2020) and ITI -LARSyS, (Project - UIDB/50009/2020).
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Formiga, B., Rebelo, F., Cruz Pinto, J., Gomes, E. (2022). How Architectural Forms Can Influence Emotional Reactions: An Exploratory Study. In: Soares, M.M., Rosenzweig, E., Marcus, A. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability: Design for Emotion, Well-being and Health, Learning, and Culture. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13322. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05900-1_3
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