Assessment Of Perbadanan Putrajaya Office Ground Based On Urban Open Space Design Guideline

Y.C. YAP, I. MS. USMAN, MM. TAHIR, IS. Z. ABIDIN

Department of Architecture National University of Malaysia 43600 UKM, Bangi, Selangor

MALAYSIA kelvin5561@hotmail.com

Abstract: - Environmental design research efforts over the decades has proven significant existence value of open spaces in urban settings. One vital role that urban open places play is to provide space for the expression of diversity, both personal and cultural; this raises issues of democratic provision for access to public open space. The social and cultural values of open space include attitudes towards nature and the desire for interaction with it; understandings of ecology offer new insights into ways to serve human needs and the broader ecological framework of urban open space structures(Thompson 2002). As among the reasons, designers and public officials have demanded environmental design research to provide adequate information crucial to successful urban spaces design. Open spaces researchers have thus produced conceptual, theoretical, and practical information on definition and functions of open spaces including parks, plazas, playgrounds, and streets for references to better urban open spaces design. The article focus on the assessment of Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground based on theoretical and empirical findings by researchers targeting issues and concepts as foundations which produced a general guideline for the improvement of urban public landscape design. The topics discussed involves behavioral, perceptual, environmental dimensions of urban open spaces, where informative integration is made between literature findings and the data collected from the studied case in Putrajaya so as to produce contextual findings for better reference purpose locally. Key-Words: - Urban; Open space; Design Guidelines; Issues; Concept; Office ground; Assessment

1 Introduction By definition, it can be described as land and water in urban are that is not covered by cars or buildings, or any undeveloped land(Gold, 1980), or according to Tankel (1963), open space is not only the land, or the water on the land in and around urban areas, which is not covered by buildings, but is also the space and the light above the land. While Cranz (1982) argued that open spaces are wide-open areas that can be fluid to the extent that the city can flow into the park and the park can flow into the city. Open spaces can also be defined as an arena that allows for different types of activities encompassing necessary, optional and social activities(Gehl, 1987). Open space has played a significant role in providing places to accommodate human activities without any protection from nature conditions within urban communities. A definition of types of public indoor and outdoor space has been described by Walzer(1986), who suggest that :

Public space is space where we share with strangers, people who aren’t our relatives, friends or work

associates. It is a space for politics, religion, commerce, sport; space for peaceful coexistence and impersonal

encounter. Its character expresses and also conditions our public life, civic culture, everyday discourse.

Urban open spaces are naturally created whether or not human-made, thus categorizations are made to distinctly differentiate they typology of open space depending several aspects. They can be divided into domestic, neighborhood, and civic urban open spaces. For civic urban open space particularly, it subdivides into commercial, health and education, transport and recreational categories, thus office grounds naturally falls under the commercial urban open space. Unlike domestic and neighborhood open spaces, civic open spaces present significant differences social and physically, for one reason is that civic open spaces tend to be located further from home than either domestic or neighborhood urban open spaces. People who visit these places have to have specific reason or destinations to utilize these spaces or the building associated with them. This phenomena creates a number of critical issues on functionality, safety and security, comfort, stress, aesthetics and perception, meaning, health benefits and environmental quality.

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2 Research Methodology Among the research methodology used in this article is literature studies and reference to journals and articles alike relating to urban open space designs, users perspectives, aesthetical perceptual, environmental influence, safety and security concerning urban open public spaces. Most of the literature findings made reference and research based on variety of categorization of urban open spaces typology in western countries respectively, making the data referred may not as well appropriate to Malaysia’s urban open grounds. Hence modification and cross references between the data collected is made to produce information that will better cater local urban open spaces issues. Case studied has been made by visiting Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground to collect relevant data and photographs through observations from 9am to 5pm on Tuesday. Information produced and findings are based on relevant comparison between literature findings and internet sources with current conditions observed in Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground. Further theoretical and physical review elaboration of case studied in Putrajaya is made to emphasis the interrelation between the western environmental research outcomes with observation findings of local urban open spaces, in such a way it may be useful in the future urban environmental design within contextual proximity in Malaysia.

3 Urban Open Space – Office Ground of Perbadanan Putrajaya Putrajaya, the federal administrative capital of Malaysia covering 4,931 hectares of land comprises approximately 40% of natural elements and lush greenery. The master plan is designed along an axial tangent projects from the northeast to southeast taking full advantage of the natural surrounding of all directions. Its undulating terrain treats the community within to commanding vistas of the natural environment with planned landscape in botanical gardens, wetlands and parks. With natural elements preservation and reservation in mind, green open spaces within the built environment could further emphasis the intention of green concept within processes of urbanization. Office ground of Perbadanan Putrajaya could post a very distinctive focal point to the whole development of administrative building along the architectural axis. Being one of the widest open green space in vicinity, it is often concentrated with human activities when certain events take place or during weekends and tourists visits. Well planned and maintained, this office ground can be a point of node along the axial landscapes for modes of transportation. It is chosen as the referred case to make

comparison with issue and concept-oriented research methodology of urban open spaces produced by environment researcher for the past decades.

Among the discussed issues are use/nonuse/misuse of open space, safety and security, comfort, stress, aesthetics and perception, meaning, health benefits and environmental quality. 3.1 Use/Nonuse/Misuse One of the main reason open spaces are created in urban settings ultimately depends on its purpose and intention, and thus the people who are going to utilize this spaces. Measurement method of successful open space often refers to researchers’ data such as “Livability” (Appleyard, 1981) and documentations of reasons why certain spaces are not used, or used in a different way from the initial intention (Gold, 1972; Rutledge, 1986). On the other hand, Whyte(1980) argues that use of an open space is critical ingredient of success. Nevertheless, the transition of functionality tends to occur when the intended purpose does not serve the current demand of the community in vicinity anymore, eventually making an open space non-usable. When empty or vandalized, a Space simply does not work. As for the referred case in Perbandanan Putrajaya office ground, it was created with the green intention in mind, besides providing a platform before the massive building and modernist steel sculpture archway enabling visitors to appreciate and be amazed by the grandeur or its architecture. On the other hand, the office ground has complied with the principles of livability communities (AIA, 2005) including creating neighborhood identity, protect environmental resources and making the building a architectural phenomenon. Visitors and residents of Putrajaya city often refer the steel archway as landmark of Perbandanan Putrajaya office. Consequently, direction to architectures in the vicinity takes advantage of it by recognizing the landmark archway similarly.

Fig. 1 Perbandaran Putrajaya building as a focal point of the Putrajaya township.

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Preserved trees on both sides of the office ground provide shades to passer-by, or often the resting area for visitors, event participants, and even maintenance workers.

3.2 Safety and Security Safety and security aspect have been one of the major considerations of urban open space design. Feeling secure or safe in open spaces has been identified in several studies as important prerequisite for people’s use of a place (Schroeder & Anderson, 1983). Open spaces design that discourage undesirables and drug dealers is among the examples to improve the sense of secure for public users. Nevertheless, this effort could in the other way, deter social diversity and discourage use which could in the end dilute the efforts of nation building of a multicultural society within certain community, especially in the context of Malaysia. Sense of security is one major component for visitation to urban open spaces by women, children and the elderly. Crime is one of the accidents occur very frequently in any part of the world. Even with high tech surveillance devices and security officials at guard, possibilities of robbery and kidnap still exist. Hence the preventive measures taken by office ground of Perbandanan Putrajaya officials is to have tight security surveillance by security officials during nightfall, forbidding anyone to enter and alongside with ample lighting equipments around the open space which help improves vision and deter criminal to approach. Traffic speed around the open space is another major concerns due to the fact that it is the factor in parents’ restriction of children’s access to open space. In fact, Appleyard (1981) has proposed 20 miles per hour as maximum

speed on residential streets. Anyway, this is not applicable for the office ground at Perbandanan Putrajaya where the traffic flows are quite heavy. Instead, sculptural bollards are installed along the entry way of the office ground to prevent any vehicles to get across. In the other hand, these bollards mark the boundary between vehicular traffic and human traffic flow.

3.3 Comfort The level of comfort an urban open space able to provide to users is another researched theme. Adequate and comfortable seats, natural lighting, protection from natural climatic elements have proven important for open spaces use and satisfaction. In the event of organized activities or random visits, users often prefer to have designated spaces to rest and perhaps to look after their children. Office ground of Perbadanan Putrajaya provides ample seats on either sides of the green open space, besides having shaded by the thick canopy of massive trees giving a level of comfort to the extent where it actually encourages outdoor activities, having light chat and social activities alike. Species of grass planted also increase the desire to contact with it, bringing human context ever closer to nature, creating impressions of a well created realm. 3.4 Stress Relationship between stress and open space has been studied and proven important in the quality of human life. Based on the research outcome of Ulrich, Simons, Losito, Fiorito, Miles, and Zelson(1991) which found out that subjects recovered significantly faster and more completely from stress when exposed to natural than to urban environments. In a related study, Ulrich (1984)

Fig. 2 The office ground of Perbadanan Putrajaya is often used by visitors and staffs for variety of human activities such as taking photographs, rest and relax under tree shade, or even mere experience of enjoyment strolling across the lawn.

Fig.3 Adequate mechanical lighting equipments are essential in providing the sense of security during nightfall.

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has made comparison on hospital recovery rates for patients with and without views of trees in their respective hospital rooms, where he found out that patient with view to trees in the room had shorter postoperative stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments from nurses, and took fewer drugs than patients with view facing building wall. The architecture of Perbadanan Putrajaya office facade allows utilization of natural lighting through glass opening slits of the concrete frame. In the mean time, office staffs within the building are able to look out into the green open space right in front of the building. This urban open space provide the green view to people look into it whether or not they are the staffs or visitors, due to the fact that greenery is scarce in the vicinity. Hence, the office ground may help decrease the level of stress confronted by staffs working long hours in the building, which could also in turn build up productivity and efficiency in staffs’ performance.

3.5 Aesthetics and Perception Perception of a urban open space by users may contribute to liveliness of the place, and it depends very much on different user groups with various perception on aesthetic value. One example is a research outcome which stated means of assess change in quality of urban vegetation in the environment as well as using vegetation to improve urban environmental perceptual quality(Smardon, 1988). For some people, it is just as important to have a open space like parks present as a resource as it is to physically use it(Kaplan, 1980). “Having it there” provides a level of satisfaction for both users and non-users alike. Some researcher(Bradley and Millward, 1986) identified that the visual amenity of an open space was mentioned frequently by research

participants, with words such as ‘natural’ and ‘countryside-like’ being used to describe certain urban open spaces in UK. Nonetheless, aesthetical visual quality being commonly the priority of designers and officials in creating an urban open space are often taken for granted and given lower ratings by public users. With increasing number of people and demand of quality of life, visual quality of urban open space may seem positively perceived in the future, hopefully. As of the studied case in Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground, public users often being overwhelmed by the sculptural steel archway and the architecture. Vegetation and greenery on the open ground have taken the role in providing a comfortable visual platform for visitors to appreciate the aesthetical values around. It may seem to be a success to the officials in creating such a breathtaking perpective point, in the mean time attracted more people to the open space that has already constrained to rare visitation being a commercial urban open space by public communities. Vegetations on the Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground has directly increase visual quality perceived by publics and desire to approach to spaces designated for rest and leisure where adequate seats and comfortable shades under trees canopy are provided. Commuters or workers from vicinity tend to perceive this open space as the stopping ground, giving rise to the function as being a rendezvous node along the axial urban strip. Well designed with users well being in mind could prove essential to a successful and livable urban open space. 3.6 Meaning The discerning meaning of an urban open space is an arguable topic. Success of open ground does not mean to have all the human activities that may possibly take place to have it livable. The larger meaning of an environment to people is an important dimension of urban quality. A particular environment may serve as a social and political symbol loading with meanings(Appleyard, 1979). Some researchers even point out that an open space does not have to have people occupation in it to have meaning and value to it, on the other hand, the existence of a space as an important symbol or reference may be enough for people to attach meaning to the open space even though they are not users. Similarly to how the Perbadanan Putrajaya open ground perceived as an architectural landmark to commuters and visitors. This particular commercial urban open space serves quite a minimal amount of human activities on normal daily basis, none other than pedestrians and

Fig. 4 Greenery has proven to have positive psychologicaleffect in reducing stress, level of anxiety and improve recovery rate from direct attention fatigue.

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office staffs who almost all prefer to cut across the grass land, and visitors to take photographs. The open office ground creates an effect of recessive art piece corresponding to the architecture behind resulted from protrusion of building elements on either sides of the steel sculpture, and playing with mass and void creates profound aesthetic perspective to amaze visiting people. This alone can prove its aesthetical meaning by comparison with flanking architectural structures. Functioning as a node along the urban strips, the green open ground often referred as the rendezvous for many transportation mode including vehicular and pedestrian. It resulted in visitors perceptual conscience to approach the Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground before voyaging into other parts of the urban township. Eventually, this proven that Perbadanan Putrajaya open space does not necessarily need concentration of human activities to have its personal identity and meaning, its distinction of architectural and environmental design or Perbadanan Putrajaya compared to other buildings has made the meaning clear, creating a ‘connectedness’ for people in a more subtle way.

3.7 Health Benefits Open spaces in urban areas have been considered to have benefits for both physical and mental health for many years. Moreover, creation of urban open spaces could lead to restorative effects of nature, aesthetic benefits and community value that can be afforded in any urban open places. Element of nature with scene of vegetation tends to encourage human activities, given the vast openness of the green space with canopy of trees provide shades from direct sunlight and comfortable softscape of green lawn. Nonetheless, activities on office ground of Perbadanan Putrajaya has

to be constraint to a certain amount of human activities during events or weekends. This is commonly happen to civic urban open space where it does not often get visited by residents and visitors wanting to do exercises. In a commercial urban open space similar to Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground, vegetated open spaces may play a significant role in improving environmental conditions, and to human mind as well. This is due to the fact that urban life can be very stressful, with elements such as noise and air pollution even before one begins the daily routine of travelling to a job or a long term health problem. Recovery from such stress is important in daily life and has been studied in an increasing number of projects. One research has confirmed that not only are natural view preferred, they can aid attention and have a restorative effect(Ulrich, 1979). Scenes of nature with vegetation over urban landscape proven to have beneficial effects with respect to relief of stress, reduce level of anxiety and aid in recovery from directed attention fatigue(Woolley, 2003). Being the apparent green space in the vicinity, office ground of Perbadanan Putrajaya may well be the nature element for the vision of commuters and visitors alike. Surrounded by massive architecture along the urban strips, government servants working in the nearby environment could take advantage of the greenery of Perbadanan Putrajaya open ground, with nature element exists in the concrete jungle people are able to have a peace of mind, improving mental health and rejoice to hit higher productivity and efficiency in their daily routine. 3.8 Environmental Quality Urbanization advancement all over the world for the past decades had taken place in a very active pace relentlessly. Taking mother nature for granted, construction and building officials have less to care about the consequences that over development could eventually cost them. In fact, a variety of researchers have discussed the environmental factors that can be influenced by urban development and their consequences, and also discussed the ameliorating influence that landscape could have on these impacts if urban areas are well designed and managed. According to Chandler(1978), the environmental changes that occurs caused by development of urbanization includes airflow, air pollution, radiation and sunshine, temperature, humidity and precipitation. The impact of each of these factors depend much on different city whether individually or collectively. In the studied case of Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground, green spaces and vegetation help reduce the environmental negative impact occurred resulted from

Fig. 5 Being the landmark along Persiaran Perdana, Perbadanan Putrajaya open space has often perceived as thereference node to visiting people.

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the active urbanization activity of Putrajaya township. Airflow condition around Perbadanan Putrajaya building has altered due to the fact that urban area tends to increase the roughness by built structures which generally will lower the wind speed across the conurbation. Nonetheless, designers had managed to create ample open space to capture wind flow so as to introduce natural ventilation across the office ground. Air and noise pollution resulted from vehicular traffic flow and the increasing construction activity nearby deteriorates mental and physical health of commuters alike, thus green open spaces with lush vegetation is essential to counter balance the negative impacts by decreasing the pathogenic and toxic particles in the air. Buffering property of trees and vegetation is a natural way to reduce noise pollution in vicinity, besides functioning as urban demarcative tool and urban aesthetics. Urban temperature build up caused by island heat effect is inevitable, resulted from the heat conductive building materials and daily human activities such as cooking and driving, eventually leading to lower humidity and higher precipitation recorded annually as construction commences. Green area of Perbadanan Putrajaya office ground within the township community tends to work the other way round, where they are capable of absorbing heat and carbon dioxide, reducing the overall temperature in the surrounding area, improving the ensuing negative environmental impacts that heat island effect brings about. Nonetheless, it still depends on the amount of green spaces allocated and the rate of urbanization activities to achieve optimal result.

4 Climatic Issue Regarding the research information collected from various case studies, seldom mentioned issues

concerning local weather or climate. This might be mainly due to temperate climate experienced by urban open spaces in studied cases. Transformation of urban open spaces accordingly with seasonal change enhances the usability and livability of an open space, from a flower garden during summers to skating ring in the winters. Unfortunately weather condition in Malaysia is more of an extreme when it comes to sunny seasons. The surrounding temperature hikes to an extent that it actually deviates far from the comfort zone for an ordinary human being to endure, which peaked to a 40 degree Celsius occasionally during drought seasons. Unlike the urban open spaces in foreign settings with temperate condition, open grounds in Malaysia receive almost no visitor that have themselves sunbathing under the blazing heat, except for cloudy condition or without the present of direct sunlight, which could decrease human activities that are essential for an open space to be livable. Nonetheless, from the observation made from case study in Perbadanan Putrajaya, visitors and workers have the option to rest and protect themselves under tree shades. In the mean time, natural ventilation under the trees improves overall level of comfort. This could be the solution to create the kind of urban open spaces that actually responsive to Malaysia’s climatic issues. Providing suitable species of vegetations and planted at strategic locations, responsive to orientation of sunlight, casting shades onto designated open spaces to decrease surrounding temperature to a level of comfort so as to encourage human activities. However, creating identity for urban open spaces in Malaysia may be a disputable issue, as more and more designers are keener to take precedents and examples from foreign settings, and literally installing environmental design here. More research and study efforts should take place as research information is crucial for better reference to environmental design which is more responsive to contextual issues.

5 Conclusion Urban environmental design has been playing a much important role in sustaining quality of life, rather than meeting peoples’ demand to ‘countryside-like’ landscapes. Being part of the mother nature, human are always symbiotically interrelated with natural vegetation to the extent that human literally could not sustain life without them. In the 21st century of modernization with urban-oriented lifestyle, people are gradually leaving the symbiotic ideal of life and choose to move along with the transition of civilization. Hence with the urbanization lifestyle in mind, people started to seek back the lost connection with nature. This proves the

Fig. 6 Environmental issue is often the major concern in process of urbanization. Introducing vegetation into urban open spaces could aid in reducing negative environmental impacts to overall surrounding.

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importance of having open spaces within an urbanized township to provide green area where human activities take place under the very natural environment. Hence, well designed and planned urban open spaces have been called upon to improve the quality of spaces used to achieve successful open spaces. Various research methodology has taken up the task to produce guidelines and reference of urban open spaces design, such as plaza, park, streets, office ground and neighborhood playground. As conclusion, office ground at Perbadanan Putrajaya has played its role well in the community in providing a green nodes along the urban axial strip, creates its very own meaning and definition of urban landmark, and based on the literature findings, achieved great impressions in terms of open space livability and preserving greenery, improves environmental health and quality mentally and physically, and being an aesthetical phenomenon which Putrajaya township could boast of for generations to come. References: Appleyard,D.(1979) ‘The Environment as A Social

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