Affordance-based Design Method: A Case Study of University Campus

Development of a built environment encompasses urban design, land use, transportation system, and accommodates patterns of human activity within the physical environment. Holistic development of built environment requires a multidisciplinary design team of urban planners, architects and sustainability advisors from an early design stage. Literature and industry-practices show growth of designer's techniques and competencies, sustainable development capabilities, and user-centric prospective in the early design. However, there is a lack of systematic method and all-inclusive approach to design a built environment. Thus, proposed research aims to develop a design method which is user-inspired, stakeholder conducive and environmentally conscious from an early design stage. To achieve this aim, an affordance-based design method is proposed and demonstrated through a case study of university campus. Affordance-based design method has been used for design of complex systems by capturing user needs, stakeholder ideas and generating design options. The proposed design method provides decision-making guidelines to designers, design space to incorporate stakeholders, and affordances to achieve sustainability. The proposed design method has potential to shift design and development of built environment from designer-controlled process to systematically organized process.