The Study of Mechanisms of Securing Privacy in Urban Open Spaces and Explaining the Relationship between Provided Privacy and Improving the Qualitative Levels of User’s Presence Case study: Naghshe Jahan Square

Boosting users’ attendance of open urban spaces depends on those qualitative features that enhance their feelings of security. According to theoreticians, the dwelling is happened somewhere to achieve an individual’s calmness. However, it is often the case that our dwellings and urban spaces do not provide this level of calmness. In this paper, the authors try to define the role of securing privacy on achieving the aforementioned qualities. Based on the theoretical foundations of the dwelling (according to Schultz), these qualities define the practical, theoretical and poetical aspects of the dwelling with the aim of providing comfort, calmness and imagination thus enhancing the overall quality of the dwelling. This research aims at determining the rate of enhancing the qualities of the dwelling by the effectiveness of “achieved privacy”. This is achieved by extracting data which indicate the rate of achieved privacy as well as data which present qualitative levels of presence. The research then aims to define the relationship between these two main factors. Users organize the environment and follow privacy mechanisms consciously or unconsciously to provide a desirable level of privacy depending on many personal and environmental factors. As a result, psychological security is accomplished. Discovering and utilizing environmental potentials (including elements as a refuge from undesirable vectors such as a shelter or a friend, desirable covering voices, or imaginative and memorable elements, …) and privacy mechanisms (such as selecting the direction or geometry of position, …) can help designers in achieving more efficient designed environments. This research is descriptive and analytical. It’s a correlational research and it draws on surveys. The data has been extracted from non-participant observation and structured interviews; (multiple choice questions - the questionnaire with closed questions). Participants who have taken part in interviews and the people who have been observed were seated around the big pools and fountains of Naqshe Jahan square. The correlation between two main statistical concepts; “achieved privacy” and “upgrading levels of dwelling quality” are analysed employing statistical analysis software; SPSS. It shows that achieved privacy has an impact on upgrading the level of a dwelling with 0/406 ratio which indicates that providing privacy is one of the most effective factors to upgrade the quality of the dwelling. Also, the results state that proactive behaviours of defending the territory, which one has been lately claimed to, to define and protect the spatial territory from the outer world, may cause and be effective on achieving privacy and also dwelling upgrade. The proactive defending behaviours are done to expand the borders and have an authentic scope. These behaviours include identification, defence and invasion. also, the rich environment of senses and meanings can help to provide the context for achieving privacy and upgrading the level of the dwelling; Desirable senses help to achieve concentration whilst getting rid of unwanted senses. And as the final result, Meditation and connecting to the imaginary world as a result of isolation from an ordinary life can occur. Which is what Schultz calls the poetic aspect of the dwelling.