Hiroko TAKAHASHI

Behavior Based Assessment of Residence Design - Trial investigation assuming kitchen reforming -

Kazuo NAKAMURA


Recently reforming of existing living spaces is crucial for improving quality of private residences. In this context kitchen reforming is one of the most advantageous issues in current residence conditions.The indices to assess the house design based on the human behavior were investigated. The behavior based assessment includes adaptability of the human characteristic and the life characteristic on the action which is carried out by a specific person in the residence to assess.

In this study, the reform of kitchen is taken up as a concrete case. The individual behaviors during cooking in the specific kitchen were observed in detail and their features were analyzed from various aspects.

Two subjects were selected and their behaviors during cooking were recorded by two VTRs . The subjects cooked for two menus in their own kitchen and another one, respectively. Seven indices for the behavior based assessment, that is, total time of cooking, total distance of movement, transportation load, frequency in movement, working posture, directional change of body and adaptability of operation spaces, were evaluated from the records by VTRs. The obtained results for the observation showed the indices could express the cooking action patterns including the subjects' personal characters and the physical features and evaluate the kitchen design from the viewpoints of compatibility with several human life characteristics.

In addition, the technique to evaluate the indices for virtual kitchen by using cooking action pattern of the subjects as a basic action model was proposed.
It was found that the kitchen arrangement that is adapted to the characteristic of the specific person at the kitchen reforming is found by using this method.