A study of the phenomenological dimensions of life in Iranian homes using space syntax theory (case study: houses in Hamedan City)

Home has always been the most fundamental factor of the spatiality, residence, and dwelling of humankind. The phenomenology of “home” addresses the understanding of home and its related concepts and emphasizes the life-giving aspect of living at home. Beyond its formal and functional appearance, a home entails a variety of multi-dimensional qualities that cannot be grasped merely by scientific methods based on observation, measurement, and comparison. This study seeks to find the components of the phenomenology of living in Iranian houses. The main objective is to explain the role of the qualitative components of space in the phenomenological aspect of life along with space syntax based on human movement and behavior at home.

This research falls within the category of interpretative phenomenological research. The description and analysis of data in the strategic field of logical reasoning were performed through both qualitative and quantitative methods as well as space syntax. The techniques used in the data collection phase include reading textual and visual data, visiting the houses under investigation, and interviewing the residents regarding their lived experiences. Several historical and contemporary houses in Hamedan were selected through purposive sampling.

The results indicate that home, which is a suitable structure for the manifestation of phenomenological aspects of life, can be associated with features such as privacy, symbolization of self and the world, centrality, interior-exterior space, coherence, security and peace, comfort, love and emotions, holiness and eternity, intimacy, customization, and human identity. These features can in turn be associated with space syntax components, including interconnection, centrality, discrimination index, depth, legibility index, and entropy.

Understanding the meaning of the structure of living and dwelling can be examined within a gestalt system. The qualitative meaning-making criteria of a house are interwoven with the residents and inseparable from them. This union and integration arise from a spatial configuration that was examined using space syntax. The findings of this study can be used by researchers and designers to design residential spaces with the help of phenomenological conceptions of life as well as space syntax and to examine the various aspects of biological space and its relation to human acts along with its effect on spatial configuration.