The Role of Microclimate in Attachment and Place-Making Case Study: School of Art and Architecture, Yazd University

In the process of place attachment, i.e. the emotional bond between people and special places, people contribute meanings to spaces and keep them in their memory. Many physical and social factors influence the formation of place attachment. Places need to have a level of quality and be beyond the concepts of space and location. Canter sketched the theory of place, comprising three key components: physical, functional and psychological ones (meanings people attribute to a place). Among these, microclimate is an affective factor in place-making that has been neglected among researches concerning place and place attachment. The perceived microclimate has a role in people’s behavior, their bonds with places and how they experience and remember the place. Indeed microclimate has an impact on meanings that people attribute to places and is modified by physical characteristics of a place and affects people’s functions, so it is nested in the structure of place. By considering the significant role of the sense of attachment in improving the quality of designed spaces, this paper discusses the role of the microclimate in place-making and people’s place attachment. In this regard, we first review the literature of place, place attachment and microclimate and next the relationships between these terms will be clarified. In the second part of the research, these relationships will be evaluated in the case study of School of Art and Architecture, Yazd University (Rasoulian House), which is the offspring of the land use change of 11 traditional houses, built in a way to harmonize with nature and climate. This case study was chosen because of the various microclimates in different parts of the house, and also with the land use change to an educational environment, many students studying there for years make the survey possible. We interviewed the students and 70 questionnaires consisting of 21 closed-ended Likert-type scale questions and a few open questions were distributed among them. Participants were BA students in architecture who were studying for more than 1.5 years in the school so they would be familiar with all parts of the faculty. The questions were asked about different parts and classes of the school so they could be compared. Participants also described places and the reasons for attachment to them using words and phrases. The feedbacks of 52 questionnaires were analyzed and the results indicated that microclimate was one of the many physical factors affecting place attachment, although it may be less significant than other components. The level of attachment was different within various parts of the school and the participants mentioned microclimate (sun, wind, coolness, shade, quality of light etc.) while describing the reasons of being attached to places along with other factors such as vegetation, texture, views, enclosure, color, space proportion and etc. Microclimate had an effect on students’ attendance, functions and choice of places, and different places were preferred during different seasons. This research also showed that accumulation of various microclimates in traditional houses is a factor for their quality improvement, which makes residents directly sense the thermal qualities and keep them in their memories of the places.