Evaluation of the Space Syntax Analysis in Post-Strengthening Hospital Buildings

摘要

By solving spaces through the space syntax method utilized in building and settlement scale, it is aimed to gain data that would help in understanding and interpreting the complex structure of space. Though in literature there are several studies made for the spatial analysis of buildings with different functions, such as the museums, shopping malls, hospitals, education buildings, and so forth, there is no spatial analysis made for the strengthened buildings. This paper intends to make use of the space syntax method that is utilized as an urban and architectural assessment tool in order to find out the extent the hospital buildings carrier system strenthening project affect the architectural parameters in terms of space. As the first step of this research, 130 buildings in Turkey, which were subjected to seismic performance analysis in the last ten years, were studied. A limited number of these hospital buildings were observed to be worth strengthening. In five of these buildings that were decided to be strengthened, the architectural projects of the pre- and post-strengthening stages were analyzed using the space syntax method. In this step, visibility graph analysis (VGA) conducted on these sample five different hospital buildings. For visibility analysis, Depthmap software program has been used. In the meantime, permeability graph analysis has been conducted and compared with VGA results. At the end of the analyses; the changes to be observed in the ground floor plan of the buildings with the strengthening were assessed in terms of the connectivity value, integration value and the mean depth. The Connectivity value was observed to decrease, and the mean depth value was observed to increase in all the buildings studied. The integration value was observed to vary among the buildings. It was concluded at the end of the study that; in order to minimize the space related problems that would come out after the strengthening process, the space relations analysis had to be performed according to the alternative strengthening projects of the complex functional buildings such as the hospital buildings.