Abstract:
Architectural practice world over emphasise the
ingenuity of space organization and technical
presentations of such organized spaces. This is
prevalent either in theory in our schools of
Architecture, practice and/or both. More often than
not, the human angle of architectural design and even
research is not given equal emphasis as the design
approaches. The best human design involvement is the
taking of briefs from clients, which is not sufficient in
dealing with congruency that the design outcome ought
to engender between the person and the built
environment. Our research approaches with regard to
the architectural space is equally tailored towards the
same direction as the design approaches. The human
aspect in our architectural based researches is
deemphasised. This conceptual paper aims to market
and propagate a human factor based means-end chain
(MEC) model that has the capacity to measure both the
aggregate architectural issues and the complexities of
the behavioural and perceptual orientations of the
users of the architectural space for researchers. The
conceptual framework will focus and highlight the
housing environment. The methodology that the MECmodel uses is called Laddering one-on-one interview
technique, which is qualitative in nature. Research
outcomes from this model will not only be relevant to
the academic platforms, but can be commercialised by
practitioners in the building industry. If we must have
a sustainable built environment in the 21st century and
beyond, our architecture based researches must
emphasise person-environment congruent based
researches as well. There are a lot of potentials using
this research model available to the built environment
researchers.
