Affordance-based design evaluation: Bridging architectural intention and adaptive user behavior

Design Studies, vol. 101, pp. 101361

Abstract

Affordances—the action possibilities provided by the environment—are a central notion in ecological psychology, offering valuable insights into dynamic user-environment interactions. In recent years, affordance theory has gained traction in architecture and design for its potential to illuminate how users perceive and engage with built environments, informing both design thinking and performance evaluation. Despite this growing interest, its application within architectural design research remains limited. This article introduces an affordance-based evaluation framework developed to analyze how built environments enable or constrain adaptive user behaviors. Grounded in ecological psychology and architectural theory, the framework provides a structured approach for assessing usability, anticipating behavioral variability, and aligning design outcomes with diverse user needs. By explicitly linking architectural intention with situated user-environment interaction, the framework contributes a design-oriented methodology for improving responsiveness, inclusivity, and the adaptive capacity of the built environment throughout its lifecycle. • Introduces an affordance-based framework for architectural design evaluation. • Bridges the architectural intention with adaptive user-environment interaction. • Integrates ecological psychology and architectural theory for design analysis. • Supports usability, inclusivity, and adaptability across the building lifecycle. • Provides a structured method to align design outcomes with user behavior.

Authors 1

1. Alexander Koutamanis

   Delft University of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands