Environment Design Methods Based on the Affordance Mechanism

While establishing the theory of affordance, Gibson, an ecological psychologist put forward the affordance mechanism that refers to animals often exchange information with air as the intermediary, guide their behaviors by surface morphology and specific spacial layouts, and perceive the affordance through the fit between environment measurement dimension and action measurement. Here based on the mechanisms, we proposed environment design, i. e., building artificial environment atmosphere with the embodiment perception of the medium, leading direct use behavior through surface and its morphology, realizing different spacial-function via specific layout configuration, and taking the scale comparability mechanism as the benchmark in spatial scale design. We also probed the practical applications in environment design by following the design approach of the affordance mechanism, including the construction of indoor and outdoor environment atmosphere, the surface design for the children playgrounds encouraging their exploration behaviors, the environment space and place design for the different layouts, and the city scale design fitting for multiple habitats.