CAMPUS LANDSCAPE SPACE PLANNING AND DESIGN USING QFD

Huan Yang got her Master of Landscape Architecture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States. Currently, she is in the Ph.D. program. She spent all her childhood in one of the 10 most beautiful universities in China, Sichuan University. Huan Yang wants to make every campus the most beautiful and enjoyable place.

The design of campus landscape space has gained more recognition in the recent twenty years. One of the significant changes in the design process is the taking of users needs/concerns into account, which emphasizes the importance of user involvement and different techniques in soliciting user input. But there is a missing link between user input and the design program elements. In this thesis, the author examine the past practice of campus landscape space design and propose using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to fill in this missing link. QFD has been used in various industries for years. It emphasizes the importance of taking users needs, called Voice of Customers (VOC), into the design process. The employment of different matrices to capture the relationship between VOC and subsequent design and quality characteristics makes QFD a unique framework suitable to fill the gap in the current design process. A case study including the advantages, the obstacles, and the unique condition of using QFD in landscape design is conducted. The study yields several insights on the application of QFD in campus landscape space design, which are applicable in other landscape design projects.