Microclimate Conditions and Space Use Variations

Subject Areas : Urban Design

Hocine Boumaraf ¹ , bdelmalek Tacherift ²

1 - Département de Gestion des Techniques Urbaines(G.T.U)
2 - Université Mohamed Khider – Biskra Algérie

Received: 2011-12-17 Accepted : 2012-02-17 Published : 2012-01-01

Keywords: Microclimate conditions, space use, measurement, video observations, interviews,

Abstract :

This paper is a part of study about the impact of the microclimate on the space use and the user’sbehaviours. The purpose of our study is to get an in-depth understanding of how people use out door public spaces indifferent climatic conditions, how their behaviour and perception of the space change with the climatic variations. Wehave employed a multi-method approach which combines a “qualitative” and “quantitative” analysis. Three squareswere chosen as a setting for either a video observations, climatic measurement and interviews with the users. The wholeinvestigations were conducted one day in winter 2009 and one day in summer 2010. The result of the qualitative andthe quantitative analysis revealed that the climate variables played very different roles in predicting the use mode anddensity of the three squares in the two seasonal periods.