Building an ecological sense of place in metropolitan public footpaths through architectural enclosure

Abstract

Taking the jam-packed buildings of the metropolitan space as a forest, we experience the in-between spaces or in other words public footpaths, and depending on the images produced from such experiences we come and go between the copiousness and penuriousness of life. But regrettably if we examine the properties of modern metropolitan space, indigenous placeness of the site are being divested in the course of commercial developments, and the sense of place that should be enjoyed are getting lost. This research aims to find the methodology of reverting back to the genuine sense of place through an ecocentric perspective of architectural enclosure. For this regression to placeness, spatial organization in an enclosing shape that induces a movement known as ‘stroll’ was necessary. The logic that humans holistically desire an organic order of nature that essentially resembles themselves was placed as the clue to ecological sense of place, and this generated the connection between the expressive characteristics of the organically surrounding enclosure shapes of spacial organization and sense of place.