FROM QUALITATIVE TO QUANTITATIVE: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSFORMING QUALITATIVE ASPECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY INTO QUANTITATIVE TERMS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE DESIGNERS' WORK

Environmental quality is an important concern affecting quality of life and plays a critical role in every urban milieu. Aspects of environmental quality, such as safety, security, privacy, sense of place, and visibility are considered to be qualitative and are generally studied using qualitative methods, tools and techniques in order to describe and explain their role in the urban space, but lack the designer"s perspective and tools for analysing the results in urban geometric terms This paper proposes an approach and a methodology framework that transforms qualitative aspects of environmental quality into quantitative geometrical terms that provide support to the work of architects and urban designers by allowing them to reference these aspects objectively. The new approach is demonstrated on one qualitative aspect, the visual privacy, and introduces a model that measures it in the urban environment, developed based on the proposed methodology. This includes the three parts of the methodology framework: (1) transformation - identifying qualitative aspects of privacy for transforming them to objective terms; (2) development of measurement methods - for evaluating and measuring privacy in the urban environment; (3) development of a scenario for the use of the methods during the urban design process. The model to measure the visual privacy emphasizes the potential for future development, where the designer will have the opportunity to evaluate one quality type of the environment, the visual privacy level, and be able to improve the design for benefitting better privacy levels. Hence, this morphological approach can be used by urban designers and architects during the design and development process and can contribute to the development of sustainable urban environments.