Architecture and the potential of bullying behavior in elementary school environment

Abstract

Bullying is known for its various negative effects felt by the victims, such as trauma, physical injury, and even death. Nevertheless, bullying is often considered as a common behavior in various social environments. According to Day and Midbjer (2007), architecture might have an impact on bullying; scale and unsupervised out- of-sight spaces are architecture-related issues that could create opportunities to bring out bullying behavior. A previous study by Bulach, Fulbright, and Williams (2003) found that elementary schools are one of the places where bullying mostly occurs. Regarding the issue, the purpose of this study is to identify t relation between architecture and bullying potential. The authors will observe the elementary school environment and analyze its scale, spatial configuration, and spatial quality using several indicators based on previous research (Day & Midbjer, 2007; Smith & Sharp, 1994; Dudek & Baumman, 2015; Olds, 2001; Lee & Ha, 2016). Findings from this paper suggest that the school building scale, its spatial configuration, and quality are the key factors to unsupervised space, which might contribute to the possibility of bullying.