International Journal of

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During the Pahlavi era, Iran's widespread developments influenced by the industrial revolution led to a lot of changes in family structure and by changing the function of family and the roles and relations of family members, paved the way for a change in the houses' spatial organization. Therefore, the main question addressed in this study is: “"What changes are brought about in the space organization of houses of Yazd as a consequence of changes in the family structure (from the Pahlavi era to the present)?
The strategy of research is qualitative and the method is grounded theory. The results of the present study revealed that every change in family structure has an equivalent effect on houses’ spatial organization. In fact, with the horizontalization of the pyramid of power and the creation of democracy in the family, the house has also become democratic and age and gender hierarchies have been eliminated from the organization of spaces. Besides, with the increase of individuality in the family, the organization of housing spaces has also changed in order to create distinct personal realms and eliminate the continuity and fluidity of the space. Moreover, by eliminating many of the functions and duties of the family, the functions and duties of the house have also changed such that it has become just a place for resting.

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School environments are connected to children perceptions and emotions. The goal of this research is to explore children subjective perceptions of their school environment using “Q-sort methodology” as a unique method for environmental studies. This paper makes two main contributions. First, the research provides a study design to identify children’s perceptions of school environment that propose new information about what children prefer and can be used in the design of school spaces by designers. Second, it evaluates Q-sort methodology for gathering data directly from children concerning about their perceptions and preferences to clarify their perspectives of  the environment based on these objectives. The questions that this paper addresses are: 1- What environmental components in schools do children percieve positively and prefer? And, 2- How can research with children about their place perceptions using Q-sort? According to the purpose of the study, the respondents included 30 children (boys) from the first and second grade of two private primary schools in Kerman. The research, based on q-sort methodology, used interview as a tool for collecting data and discourse analysis for analyzing the data, and exploring the children’s perspectives. The study revealed that children interpreted spaces psychologically and had positive perceptions of and preferences for informal, personal, hiding, cozy, home-like and playground spaces and so on, likely due to affording their psychosocial needs.  The result shows that future school designs should explore strategies that use connections of physical and psychosocial characteristics of child's environments to foster positive experience and perceptions.