In Search Of The Vitality Of Path Path Design For Living

Path is the way one moves, it is a space to connect buildings or rooms. It includes streets, squares, bridges in city, and corridors, stairs, atriums in buildings. As a physical space, path has three functions, ie, traffic, ethic, live,In this thesis, path is defined as traffic path and living path, and the latter is the focus of this reseach.There are a lot of reseaches which relvant to path. Some of them emphasize urban paths, some of them emphasize a certain aspect of path, and some others just relate to path when they study cities or buildings. Here, thesis gives path an abstract and integrated study. Since it is abstracted, thesis gives a new view of the problem, and it also provides an opportunity to conclude general design strategies.Cities and buildings are all the material outcome of human life. The paths in cities and buildings are not serve traffic only. The vitality of path is an important criterion for the path construction. However, there are some paths which over emphasize the traffic efficience or visual outlook, and ignore the live function of them. It leads to the activities on the path is cut down, to the paths lack of vitality, to the relevant urban and buildings' problems.To serve these problems, this reseach focus on the life aspect. And with consciously design, to inspire the vitality of path. And also, the vitality of path is related to social culture, economy, and technology, regionally environment. This reseach try to serve the form of vitality from urban and architectural design.The quantity and quality of activities on the path is the materialization of vitality. Study on the vitality of path should start from the research of activities. This thesis follows Jan Gehl's division of activities: inevitable activities, spontaneous activities and social activities. And then, concludes two basic demands which lead to these activities, ie, provide more opportunities to meet and better space to carry out. Then, with these two basic demands, the thesis concludes five design principles.The keystone of the thesis is to conclude useful strategies. Base on former five design principles, and with the knowledge of the psychology of buildings, this thesis search for the strategies from structure, space, surface aspects, and gain twelve general design strategies. Finally, the thesis give some comparison on these strategies in five collective houses design projects, and introduces the applications of these strategies in a middle school project.