Analytical Approach to Investigate the Gender and Its Differences in Understanding Physical Space, Case Study: Cultural Centers in Tehran

Gender or Sex? Is there a difference between them? Do opposite sexes feel dramatically different about the same places or the same built environment at the same time? Are there any diversities between understanding and perception? Is there a possibility of existing different perceptions between different genders of a same built environment? The distinction between sex and gender (the anatomy of an individual’s reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics), which can refer to either social roles based on the sex of the person (gender role) or personal identification of one’s own gender based on an internal awareness (gender identity). The sex and gender distinction is not universal. In ordinary speech, sex and gender are often used interchangeably. In one hand the term perception (from the Latin perception) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the environment. Perception is not only the passive receipt of these signals, but it is also shaped by the recipient’s learning, memory, expectation, and attention. On the other hand there is the term understanding. Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object. Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding. Understanding implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge that are sufficient to support intelligent behaviors. The present paper aims to well achieve the necessary items in a built environment’s design, which has been designed properly for both genders (male and female). Thus such built environment is an outcome of considering and cognizing the differences between two genders’ perceptions. It should be emphasized that a built environment’s perception is one of the most important and complex aspects of the recognition and measurement of built environment. Meanwhile, one of the most important aspects of these differences and another significant feature is gender, and it seems that gender is related to people’s attitudes and perceptions of a phenomena. Therefor as a result of such differences it can be inferred that, different people in confrontation with a built environment may have different perceptions. It seems that such complicated issues have not been studied independently while the beneficial results of such advantageous experiments can have a significant impact on improving the quality of human environment. Therefor this brief study intends to properly respond the following questions: “is there any meaningful association between gender and the perception of the built environment? Are there any significant difference in the features of a place, in the perception of the built environment by the inquiry samples, among the sexes?” To achieve the answers of the proposed questions analyzing a public place where both genders may attend equally should be chosen. Of course there are many various places with different functions where both males and females might widely attend. We chose cultural centers out of the many functional built environments that are being used by both genders. The cultural centers were selected in different locations in Tehran and Groups of male and female respondents have been used due to evaluate implication of the perception of the built environment. The convincing reason of choosing different location is to prevent the regional factor to influence this survey. The method is semantic differential or SD. It is a type of a rating scale designed to measure the connotative meaning of objects, events, and concepts. The connotations are used to derive the attitude towards the given objects, event or concept. The semantic differential is today’s one of the most widely used scales used in the measurement of attitudes. One of the reasons is the versatility of the items. The bipolar adjective pairs can be used for a wide variety of subjects. Based on the results of this research, people in dealing with the built environment are considerably sensitive about all aspects of that place, visual categories, and emotional, cognitive and functional aspects. This issue should be noticeably considered by designers. Therefor they should consider a suitable approach that all users’ senses are properly stimulated. This could lead to more complete and evocate understandings of the built environment. Taking everything into consideration the results of this study can lead to achieve remarkably the differences of female and male perceptions, and with considering these significant differences, to improve the quality of both sexes presence.