Ecological validity of architectural cognition: a framework

Architects are often criticized for not using psychological evidence in design. This paper explores whether the issue lies in the relevance of this evidence for predicting behaviour, perception and cognition in unbuilt buildings. Psychological experiments often fail to mirror real-world building experiences. We introduce the Ecological Validity of Architectural Cognition (EVAC) framework, which evaluates the generalizability of experimental results to real buildings by comparing experimental participants with actual building users in behavioural, perceptual and cognitive terms. We apply EVAC to studies on perceived spaciousness to identify research gaps and suggest methods that better align with real-world building experiences.

建筑师常因在设计中未纳入心理学实证依据而饱受诟病。本文旨在探究该问题是否源于此类实证依据在预测未建成建筑中的行为、感知与认知层面的适用性缺陷。心理学实验往往难以复刻真实建筑空间中的实际体验。我们提出建筑认知生态效度（Ecological Validity of Architectural Cognition, EVAC）框架，该框架通过在行为、感知与认知维度对比实验参与者与真实建筑使用者的表现，评估实验结果向真实建筑场景的推广适用性。我们将EVAC框架应用于感知空间宽敞度相关研究，以厘清现有研究的不足，并提出更贴合真实建筑空间体验的研究方法。