Post date: Jan 26, 2016 6:59:59 PM
Critical to achieving high quality architecture is that their be a way to assess the achievement of quality in an objective way. While it is relatively straightforward to perform mathematical continuations to get the performance of a building or space on a quantitative scale, quality is often assessed subjectively. Assessments are often unreliable, meaning one person's assessment may be dramatically different from another person's. We need a way to determine quality objectively and reliably.
A few years ago, Shelby Martin, who was a senior in our BED program, conducted an undergraduate research project with Professor Booth and myself to devise an instrument for studying the quality of an urban district. Here is Shelby's thesis:
Martin thesis on assessing urban mixed use quality
I also recommend the book Great Streets by Allan Jacobs. You can get the book from Evans library, but here is a synopsis:
These resources begin to give us a way to assess the qualities of an urban space. Although they have been directed toward existing environments, we could use them to guide design and then assess the quality of future space. Using the BIM CAVE, we can walk through a space that we have designed and use these guidelines to assess its qualities in a quite objective way.