Assessing the effective components on improving the quality of architectural space in the Public Libraries (case study: Central Library of Hamadan)

Architectural space, organizes the human life. Assessing and prioritizing the effective criteria in designing architectural space could be also effective on designer’s decision to improve the qualitative elements of space and provide the necessary physical utilities for its inhabitants or potential users. The public libraries by responding to cultural capitation, and as major sources of public education are promoting public knowledge and playing an important role in attracting maximum number of people. In each architectural space, physical elements have been considered as main factors to shape the space. Space is one of the elements in architectural design which is considered continuously in both theory and profession. People perceive the architecture by space and recognize it by form and these two parts of architecture have inherent relationship with each other and therefor enrichment of space comes from the composition of physical elements. In other words, the Interconnectedness between essence of space and physical elements have been recognized as main parts of architectural process. Quality is a sophis ticated subject in architecture which in different situations gets disparate definitions. Quality is one of the accepted ideal of analysis and perceiving architectural projects. Quality of subject indicates the transcendence, similarity or inferior of subject in comparison with other subjects. Perceiving the superior or inferior quality of subjects could be accomplished by a subjective or objective process. Improving the quality of architectural space could have a major effect on sense of user and it could influence the user's satisfaction during the exis tence of a certain space. There are lots of s trategies to obtain high qualities in spaces such as increasing flexibility, multifunctioning the space, introducing active and passive spaces in architecture, promoting transparency, porosity, fluidity, and drawing connections between indoor and outdoor spaces.
The main purpose of this s tudy is to find the criteria that promotes the quality of architectural space in libraries. This analysis-descriptive research has been done with a quantitative approach, by using factor analysis and SPSS20 software for balancing and reduction of measures in order to gain a desirable design in connection with the supply of user’s satisfaction of architectural space. In this research, forming out questionnaires for the case s tudy was necessary to achieve the aforementioned purposes. The population who participated in this research consisted of selected Hamadan library users, including men and women in the age range of 18-35 years old, who were observed carefully in a period of 4 months. According to s tatis tical methods, sample size was 226 and the type of sample selecting method was random sampling. With this arrangement, special physical specifications of central library of Hamadan as an exis ting and viable sample of cultural space in a city scale has been analyzed, and the results of this research have revealed that among 10 factors in improvement of special qualities in libraries, attention to view and vegetarian covering, interior lighting and the proportion in design are the mos t important factors that should be the main priorities for interventions, in order to supply the desirable s tudy room.