Assessment of Perception of Physical Environment in the Context of Cognitive Maps and Experiences

Experiences in the physical environment awaken different perceptions in different people and enable the formation of an environmental image in people’s minds during and after use. The campuses are also the physical environments in which students from different cultural, ethnic, and social backgrounds spend part of their lives during their education. In the formation of the environmental image, it is important that the students choose, organize, and add meaning to what they see in line with their own needs and goals. In this way, the image formed in the minds of the students limits what is seen, while emphasizing what is important according to their own mental orientation. In this context, the students are asked to draw the cognitive maps of the Meselik Campus of Eskisehir Osmangazi University. The obtained cognitive maps are examined, and the image elements used are evaluated statistically. As a result of the evaluation, it is seen that the students emphasize the reference points and the roads first. In this study, cognitive maps of first and fourth grade architectural students were evaluated separately and then compared with each other in order to determine the change of time factor in students’ perception and the effect of architectural education on expression techniques.