Social affordances and the architectural design: - a case study of a central stairway

In this paper, we offer arguments for the relevance and usefulness of applying a psychological affordance perspective to social interaction in the built environment. Our empirical focus is on building elements where the intention of the architectural design is better to foster social coordination and interaction between building users. We illustrate how the concept of social affordances relates to such social activities through scrutinizing a special designed central stairway architectural element in a building housing the Ørestad College in Copenhagen, Denmark. We take a qualitative approach using observational study techniques using video recordings of the everyday use the stairway at the college. Through our analysis we identify eight types of social interactions, which we distilled into four categories of social activities afforded by the lays-out of the stairway and its surroundings; social walking, social spotting, social waiting and social encountering. We discuss our findings both theoretically and in relation to architectural practice and we conclude that the concept of social affordances would be of great use and value for research and practice in architectural design. Moreover, the findings presented in this paper have potential theoretical implications related to the coupling between the concept of affordances on one hand and social interactions on the other, a coupling that is shown to be relevant not only theoretically, but also through its empirical application.