Abstract

Environmental interactions and the complexity of architectural layouts have significant effects on the ease of user navigation within a building. Familiarity with or knowing the building is another important issue in this regard. Gärling, as a pioneer in wayfinding studies, has shown that familiarity with building has a major impact on navigation performance such that visual accessibility would be created when large parts of the building are easily visible and are cross-connected to the common areas of the building. Therefore, participants should use less spatial knowledge and rather rely directly on information available in their visual field. In contrast, unfamiliar participants have less spatial knowledge about setting and just find their route by visible accessibility through predefined space such as an entrance area and lobby. Space syntax theory introduces the alignment layer formed by the graph in the architectural analysis. In this article, the simple route variables extracted from the Depthmap (the space syntax software) show the behavioral differences among users and relate them to spatial knowledge and wayfinding strategies. As a result, the route chosen by unfamiliar users has higher values in space syntax variables such as connectivity, integrity, and step depth along their destinations. However, the familiarities have effective, detailed spatial knowledge of the route, building layout, and the minimum value of integrity and connectivity.