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Abstract

Floorplans in buildings ace prestructured not only by functional restrictions, but also by attitudes towards preferred conditions. The attitudes are implicit in social and cultural traditions; yet not always are they explicitly stated as program intentions. Each type of institution adheres to a cultural value orientation which defines organisational contexts as preferred paradigms for intended functions, expected activity and supporting conditions. The starting point of this thesis lies in social theory which is used to define four major types of value orientations describing paradigms for human interaction in social organisations. These four are Control, Integration, Prestige and Profit. The main body of this work consists of an application of these four value orientations to the physical attributes of an assortment of building plans for each of four different genotypic organisations: prisons, schools, offices and shopping centres. A building plan is seen as a number of places organized and interrelated by a circulation system. Five generic conditions, of plans of building circulation systems, orient users through various stages towards, into and within the organisational environment. These are location, boundary, layout, paths and edges. The results of analyses of the above parameters show that characteristic conditions of plans essentially support organisational goals and values. The environment created responds to the value intentions of organisations and to the value orientations of users, as well as or instead of functional considerations. For example, the superordinate value orientation of a prison is control, and path (corridor) arrangements reinforce this orientation no matter how dysfunctional they may otherwise be. It is concluded that the value orientations of an institution tie its organisational context to the conditions of a corresponding physical environment. The value orientations are thus pertinent to the rules of building owners, building programmers, and the results illuminate how assumed values condition the way so-called functional requirements are interpreted in institutional architecture.