A Study of the Effect of Outdoor Semi-open Space on the Quality of the Residential Environment (Case Study: Apartment in Bushehr City)

The advent of the Industrial Revolution in Iran has led to extensive changes in residential architecture, such as the unprecedented growth of apartment life, the mass construction of pre-designed complexes, and the vertical expansion of housing. Significant parts of architectural spaces formed to supply human beings' individual and social needs and improve the quality of their residential environment throughout history have changed during these developments. At this time, semi-open private spaces were among the most significant spaces that lost many of their features due to this attitude. Semi-open space is an Iranian architecture feature and has played a specific role in the architecture and urbanism in warm and humid areas. Although using a variety of semi-open spaces has a rich history in the architecture of Bushehr city, its role in the new construction of this city has diminished. It has lost many of its physical and functional aspects. The present study aims to investigate the effect of outdoor semi-open spaces on the quality of the residential environment in contemporary apartments in Bushehr city by using mixed research methods. Research literature includes the contents on semi-open spaces as the independent variable and the quality of the residential environment as the dependent variable.

Therefore, four aspects and their components are extracted and evaluated to assess semi-open residential space quality using the content analysis method in the following aspects: 1. Environmental aspects (thermal conditions and air quality, and visual and sound features); 2. Physical aspects (design and architecture type, aesthetic issues, accesses, and contact with the natural environment and green space); 3. Human aspect (individual and psychological characteristics, desires and needs, cultural characteristics and lifestyle, and social relations); and 4. Functional aspects (facilities and capabilities, activities, and services). In order to survey the residents' opinion about these aspects and their components, a questionnaire was designed based on a Likert scale using two different experimental methods, including the purposive approach (i.e. to express people's expectations and needs in the current living conditions), and the ideal and dream approach (i.e. to have a quantitative or qualitative ideal standard based on people's experiences and aspirations. The validity of the questionnaire is evaluated and confirmed based on the Delphi method, by seven experts in the three areas of residential environment quality, semi-open space, and architecture of Bushehr city. The research reliability is investigated using Cronbach's alpha (=0.93). The data are analyzed using a quantitative research method, R software, the Fisher's exact tests (to investigate the independence of two nominal variables), Mann-Whitney U test (a non-parametric test, which is used to investigate two independent subgroups such as gender), and Kruskal Wallis sum-rank test (to investigate variables with more than two subgroups). In the Kruskal Wallis test, wherever the test result is significant (P value less than 0.05), it is concluded that different categories of auxiliary variables have different results. The Dunn's test is used to determine which categories are statistically significantly different in answering the question. Then, those categories that are significantly different from each other are extracted.

This study results show that the spatial aspect has the greatest impact on women's satisfaction, and the functional aspect has the most significant impact on men's satisfaction. The human aspect had the least impact on both genders. Then, the role of components and their related indicators were questioned by genders. In the physical aspect, according to men and women, the index of visual harmony has the greatest impact on the aesthetic components, and the indices of dimensions and type of architecture have the least impact. This result reveals that despite the importance of physical features of terraces, they have been neglected in the design of Bushehr apartments. In the case of the functional aspect, the indices of contact with nature and privacy have provided the highest and lowest level of satisfaction with the component of facilities, respectively. This result emphasizes the need to consider the proper design of terraces to maintain residents' privacy. Concerning the environmental aspect for both genders, the residents' culture plays the most significant role. For this component, the highest and lowest scores are attributed to lifestyle and air quality indices, respectively. Regarding the human aspect, according to both genders, the psychological aspect component plays the most significant role. The highest and lowest priorities are attributed to the indices of attachment to place and family interactions, respectively.

The results of this study reveal that, among the components, women have more tendency to the spatial component, and men pay more attention to the functional component. The impact of human and environmental components was also the next priority for the residents, respectively. Among the subcomponents of the terrace, from the women's perspective, the residents' culture, and from the men's perspective, the aesthetics had the greatest impact on the satisfaction of the residents of Bushehr apartments. The effect of the terrace on improving social interactions has received the lowest score from the perspective of both groups. Also, the visual harmony index had the highest, and family interactions had the least impact on the residential environment quality among both genders. According to the results of this study on the importance of terrace spatial features in improving the quality of Bushehr contemporary apartment housing, providing physical criteria to achieve the appropriate design pattern for this type of space, and also recognizing related problems in the form of competent authorities such as municipalities, can be a suitable topic for future research.