الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Human behavior in public buildings has become a topic of great interest to scholars and behavioral researchers lately. The field has grown steadily during the last few years. Scholars are increasingly interested in understanding how architectural design features of public buildings affect the behavior of its occupants. The relationship between human beings and their surrounding environment is referred to as environmental psychology. This field of interest is shared by psychologists, sociologists, as well as, designers to study how people relate to the built environment, and how their behavior is affected by their surroundings in order to improve human environments. To justify these data, a diverse set of concepts, theories are studied, and practical methods of analysis like Space Syntax are also applied. This study focuses on Atrium spaces in public buildings. It aims at exploring how their design aspects can be manipulated for the benefit of enhancing the social nature of the space. Some atrium design aspects affect social interaction directly. Other aspects have an indirect effect, by influencing connectivity, which consequently affects social interaction. Hence, to achieve this aim, the study attempts to address two main aspects; the effect of atrium design on connectivity and social interaction, and the way connectivity influences social interaction. This leads to a clear understanding of the different effects that these aspects have on social interaction, directly and indirectly. In this research, Space Syntax analysis techniques are applied using Depthmap for further understanding the way atrium spaces design can regulate social interaction. Space Syntax analyses results, reveal that each aspect of atrium design influence social interaction between users of the space significantly, and altering any of these aspects can either encourage or discourage social interaction inside the space. In addition to this, by highlighting areas of high and low connectivity and social interaction, areas with high connectivity, also indicate high levels of social interaction and vice versa. This also justifies the theoretical data which states that there is a strong link between connectivity and social interaction.