Textile Design based on Built Environment and User Specificities: Re-scaling a classroom with colored patterns on textile

For a classroom with large windows on south and north façades, generating pupils’ discomfort due to overheat and glare, the authors designed and printed curtains. Aims of the design is to provide a solution combining the necessity of a solar protection, with the need for a spatial balance between the scale of the group of pupils and a personal anchoring for each child. By taking in account space and user specificities, the nature, graphic delineation, size and colors of the pattern are defined to reach the objective of visually rescaling the classroom. The entire composition is made of vertical and horizontal stripes of a unique abstracted floral pattern, colorfully silkscreen printed on a translucent (non-opaque) unbleached textile. The paper discusses in detail: (1) The entire process, which is of a type evaluation-design-evaluation, with on site and full-scale test of the pattern, scale and colors, as well as the global composition. (2) The results of a three years assessment program achieved by the authors, based on a post-occupancy evaluation approach and a survey focusing on three topics: general preferences (colors, shapes and patterns), perception of space (depth and anchoring) and users’ feeling (comfort and quality). (3) The proposed guidelines for similar designs.