Technotope: A Framework for Designing Interiors

Abstract

Some researchers proposed the analysis of products’ system by analogy with the system constituted by living beings. Thus, there appeared the technotope framework and a series of associated concepts: interactions (coexistence, challenge and syntechnosis) and connections (physical and semantic). The authors set out to verify the validity of this framework and its ease of application. They also investigated how the principles of structuring (coherence or contrast) worked within the technotope. Both real interiors (from the participants' homes) and ideal interiors (designed for display by professional designers) were used in the experiments. Finally, it turned out that the technotope framework is efficient and easy to apply, being a useful tool for designers. In the case of real interiors, the principles of structuring the interiors acted relatively at a low level on the technotope’s interactions and connections. Much stronger was the action of structuring principles in the case of ideal interiors. Of the connections, the physical ones have rarely been used to achieve coherence or contrast. In contrast, semantic connections were found significantly in the resulting coherences and contrasts.