DHVSU-ARCHITECTURAL THESIS MANUAL 2020-2021

Chapter
04
CHAPTER 04: PROGRAMMING
This is perhaps the most important part of your
thesis. Here, you have to come up with the possible areas
for your project as a concrete solution to the things you
discussed in the earlier part of your work. It would be
difficult to understand and appreciate what you’ll
write here if you don’t give your readers a background of
your project, its purpose, and users. In addition, since the
discussion to follow will delve on the administrative
structure of the proponent, then it would be helpful
if you could also explain what this organization
does. Your organizational chart could be your best tool on
doing this.

Before you go deeper with the details of space programming,

it would be appropriate to define the term for you. Space
programming is an exercise for the student to concretize the
abstractions of space relationships into units of
measure as well as the flow or circulation. It is
the consolidation of all the requirements, standards, rules
and regulations. Requirements would mean the needs of
the project (users and systems) in terms of 3-
dimensional spaces, facilities, spatial relationship, etc.
these may be guided by legal standards or conditions
informally set by the unit of analysis as dictated by the
needs.

Rules and regulations are the legal guidelines that

you must follow in the course of the design. The main end of
this exercise is to have a systematic presentation of all
these requirements to later on be translated in into
schemes and plans. For the purpose of the thesis, you are to
stick to the minimum requirements. However, should the
project need to provide areas for expansion, let this be
stated and taken into account.
 DHVSU-ARCHITECTURAL THESIS MANUAL 2020-2021

4.1 BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS

As your thesis will cater to its users, more than anyone

else, it is but rightful to take a look into their
activities as well as their operations if they move in an
organization. The visiting public would also share an ear
with the analysis. In this part, you will enumerate
the main departments or units and how the relate to each
other. This will give you and your readers an idea how a
certain department works and interrelate with each other. In
doing so, you will find yourself identifying which
units are active, thus requiring an active space, and which
are not. You have to indicate the magnitude and level of
sensitivity of service to adequately and effectively provide
a space for them, afterwards.

Analyzing the schedule of the activities would also

be helpful. Should your thesis focus on the behavior of the
users as its main thrust, you should expand this part and
have a thorough and in depth out-put. You may not only be
dealing with the activities of the users for the time being
but would most probably extend your analysis to the culture
of the people. Moreover, this would entail a comparative
analysis of your users’ behavior with that of other
paradigms.

Again, this is an analysis and so you would not just list

the activities and presto! You’re done with it! Apart from
identifying the activities and behavior of your
users, whether individual or group, you are to give your
readers a hint of why you’re discussing these things. How
will these affect the overall concept of your thesis? In
what way can these behaviors be a tool in designing an
effective working environment? Do you need to apply your
knowledge in space engineering? You watch and see.

4.2 INTERRELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS

This is the simplest part of space programming—but
not quite. If you think that doing matrices and bubble
 DHVSU-ARCHITECTURAL THESIS MANUAL 2020-2021

diagrams would be too easy for you to do, well

unfortunately, they’re not. Although such graphical
instruments help facilitate the organization of spaces,
they may be too flexible and so you’ll have the tendency
to overlook at the appropriate circulation. To avoid this,
it is recommended that you have to go further and create
alternative schemes or bubbles (variations of your
design) and even zoning (based on the result of matrices)
with circulation diagrams of various types of users. The
results of your case studies would probably be applied here.
Again, you are encouraged to draw various schemes to present
probable solutions- and it will not stop there. You have to
orient your readers of the variances and indicate the
advantages and disadvantages of each scheme so that you
would not have the difficulty of explaining the design of
your choice when later on tested against the concepts.
Remember to include the services and utilities.

There are different methods in programming spaces. It can be

a matrix which allocates specific variable depending on the
activity e. g. pivotal and then coming up with the
area. You may also use basic standards from the National
Building Code or other building standers and multiply these
with the number of users. Another way is to lay-out
a scheme containing the furniture, spaces, and
circulation (of course in scale). This may be most helpful
for rooms requiring specific furniture as in hospitals,
laboratories, factories and the like.

4.3 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

This has been proven as one of the most effective, if not the most
effective way of programming spaces. Its is a tow-fold
analysis, which initially caters to the qualities of the project, and
later on translated to be quantitative one. Let us first deal with
the first one. Let us first deal with the first one.
Qualitative analysis, as the term suggest is an analysis
pertinent to the QUALITIES of your proposal which will inevitably
become bases for the design.

This would have to do with five major concerns namely:

 DHVSU-ARCHITECTURAL THESIS MANUAL 2020-2021

(1) Establishing GOALS,

(2) Collecting and Analyzing FACTS,
(3) Uncovering and Testing CONCEPTS,
(4) Determining NEEDS and
(5) Stating the Problems

All these concerns will have to be interacted with four

(4) considerations: FUNCTION, FORM, ECONOMY, and TIME. You may
notice that this programming method include the basic steps in
design or what you familiarly know n as DESIGN PROCESS. You’re
right! You will have to use the objectives in chapter 1 (goals),
the data (facts) you have gathered in chapter 2, and the proposed
ideas (concepts) you have in the next chapter to do this.

Like the interrelationship analysis, this analysis also comes on

matrix form.

Therefore, it can be interchanged so as to fit the

desired program. Provided with this manual is a simple
table with possible issues for each concern. You may
consult the book Problem Seeking by Pena to further understand
this discussion.

4.4 QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

Like any other data, a qualitative input would have to

be translated into a more perceptible program to be understood
and later be translated into a plan. This is what a
quantitative analysis does. It translated the qualitative matrix
you did to a more tangible thing. That’s right, the word is
TANGIBLE. While the qualitative speaks of the abstract, the
quantitative talks of the more realizable output- something which
can be grasped by the readers at once. You may ask: why then
can’t you go directly with the quantitative? The answer is simple
all the inputs in this section will be taken from the Qualitative
analysis. Remember, you will only TRANSLATE on a quantitative
evaluation.

What then would be the content of this part? You will

be enumerating the areas which you think will be needed
by your proposal (again, based on the qualitative analysis).
These are general areas which can be specifically named in
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various terms, depending upon the function it will perform.

Example, when you’re dealing with the schools, you may want to
call a classroom, a laboratory and a drawing room under a
single heading, say learning areas. This way, you can
generalize the function of the space you are providing. But you
have to identify all these rooms as well since you will be
determining the required number in the end. Yes, you read it
right!

NUMBERS. Quantitative analysis involves quantities, figures,

number, numerals and therefore computations. This will contain the
mathematical computations for your project.
From the most basic computation of space areas to CONSTRUCTION
COSTS, OPERATION COSTS, LIFE CYCLE COSTS, MAINTENANCE COSTS, etc.
Perhaps, you could also deal with the analysis of the COSTING and
RETURN OF INVESTMENT through concepts on funding and its possible
revenue schemes.