INCORPORATION OF CULTURAL ASPECTS IN POE: APPLICATION OF A METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL IN OFFICE ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Present in all human phenomena, culture is also present in the built environment, considered as a means of its expression, not only for what it brings in its conception, but also, for what is added during its use. The post-occupancy evaluation, in turn, has as mission evaluating the performance of the environment after its occupation by humans; hardly there will be no reverberations in the result of the POE that are derived from the cultural influences on the building and on the people who use it. However, equally difficult, is to measure these reverberations in POE. In an attempt to assist this process, this article suggests guidelines that indicate how to take into account cultural aspects in a post-occupancy evaluation. The survey, with interdisciplinary bases (anthropology, architecture and administration), using mostly ethnographic methods, studied offices in Rio de Janeiro, seeking the spatial reflections of their user’s cultural aspects. Its main result was the development of a methodology that allows the reading of these environments from the perspective of certain cultural aspects. Thus, it is presented how some indicators derived from the proposal may be included in offices’ POEs, allowing evaluation results that are more refined and more representative of the reality found in these environments. We intend that this approach gives more emphasis to the human element – main reason for the existence of any built environment – without leaving the physical environment.